Visual Arts As A Tool For Language Teaching [308414]

[anonimizat] I

VISUAL ARTS AS A TOOL

FOR LANGUAGE TEACHING

– A [anonimizat],

Conf. univ. dr. Ileana Jitaru

CANDIDAT: [anonimizat]. gradul II David Patricia

Școala Gimnazială nr. 39 „Nicolae Tonitza”

[anonimizat]. Constanța

Constanța

2021

Abstract

In the modern media society communication has developed means that used to have less relevance in the past and visual language has increasingly gained more and more ground. [anonimizat], [anonimizat]. During the SARSCoV2 lockdown, teachers had to adapt fast and find attractive teaching methods for all sorts of online platforms and visual materials turned out to best serve the purpose. [anonimizat] a [anonimizat] (ELT). [anonimizat], films and paintings in the English classroom. [anonimizat].

[anonimizat]. This is the starting point of my interdisciplinary research project I am going to do. I have always been interested in art and pupils have shown increased interest in all forms of visual communication over the last years. Consequently these were two of my motivational factors in choosing this topic. The third factor was the arts integrated classrooms that can be found in the school where I teach. [anonimizat] a more profound approach and comprehension for them. Arts students respond better when provoked visually and when their creativity is needed. I [anonimizat]. [anonimizat] a little exhibition organised by intermediate level students for lower level students.

[anonimizat]. [anonimizat]. Chapter three is a [anonimizat]-centred, [anonimizat]. The last chapter explores ways in which this project could be recreated in other contexts.

Table of contents:

Introduction 4

1. The Theoretical Cornerstones 6

1.1. Visual material 6

1.1.1. Visual material and language learning 6

1.1.2. Describing pictures 8

1.2. What is art? 8

1.3. Interdisciplinary teaching and learning: CLIL 11

2. Art in the Classroom 15

2.1. Methodology 16

2.1.1. Vocabulary 16

2.1.2. Committed students: learning by teaching others 21

2.1.3. The public face of the exhibition 24

2.1.4. Technology and learning 26

2.2. Assessing learning outcome 28

2.3. Art and critical thinking 28

3. The Art Exhibition Project 32

3.1. Class description: 6th and 8th graders 32

3.2. Preparing the project in the 6th graders 32

3.2.1. Lesson 1: Getting started 33

3.2.2. Lesson 2: An improved version of the game 34

3.2.3. Lesson 3: Picture description 34

3.3. The art exhibition 37

3.3.1. Lesson 1: First steps 37

3.3.2. Lesson 2: Developing the concept 38

3.3.3. Lesson 3: Describing and interpreting pictures 39

3.3.4. Lesson 4: How to write an audioguide 41

3.3.5. Lesson 5: Writing a script 42

3.3.6. Lesson 6: Finishing the scripts 43

3.3.7. Lessons 7-9: Recording the audioguides 43

3.3.8. Lesson 10: Setting up the exhibition 44

3.4. The audioguides 45

3.5. The museum experience 52

3.6. Looking back on the project: student feedback 55

4. Conclusions and Outlook to the Future 56

4.1. Evidence of learning 56

4.2. Recommendations for the implementation in other contexts 60

4.3. Outlook to the future 60

Bibliography 63

Picture credits 65

Appendix A : Questionnaire 1 for 6th graders 66

Appendix B : Picture descriptions by 6th graders 67

Appendix C : 8th graders’ audioguides 73

Appendix D : Art exhibition feedback questionnaire and glossary 84

Introduction

We live in the age of information and communication, and as a consequence our lives are made more and more complex by a growing base of knowledge and increasingly fast global exchanges. We are all eager for information about our fellow human beings, and have provided ourselves with the technological means to appease this hunger at any given time. Still, even if we are assisted by a multitude of electronic gadgets, language remains our main means of social interaction, just like it was in the last millennia.

Language is not the only means of communication, even though it is the most direct. On the contrary, in our modern society quite a considerable amount of information is exchanged through visual language and this can be considered as one of the attributes of nowadays media society. Ever since the diffusion of newspapers the importance of photographs has increased exceedingly, highlighted by the latest trend of social media. It has come to a point where most of the times the photographic representation of an event and its exposure on various online and offline media becomes more important than the event itself. Visual communication becomes particularly important as a manipulating tool if people are influenced by the adulteration of visual records of events, especially in the political context as history has shown us on more than one occasion.

It is also a fact that we all communicate visually in the many social situations of our daily lives. Our eyes are drawn to the faces of people around us, and we read them, on a conscious or subconscious level. We read other people's body language in real life, as well as when we watch films or look at photographs, because it gives extremely useful hints about their thoughts and actions. Given the importance of visual communication in real life, discussing the role of the visual in educating the next generation is a task that needs to be confronted by teachers if English as a subject is to play a role in the larger context of citizenship education.

Apart from this social responsibility that English as a foreign language has to fulfil, there is also a very practical one. Being able to describe what one sees is one of the basic skills one has to train when learning a language. This issue also has a very pragmatical dimension, as some 8th graders in the Romanian education system have to pass an exam if they want to be admitted in special classes where English is taught for four or six hours per week, called bilingual or intensive; a part of the English exam is an oral exam, where students have to be able to interact with the teachers at an A2 or B1 level (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages descriptors for language proficiency). There are also many students who choose to take their Cambridge English Qualification exams where in the Speaking exam they need to interact using a given picture or a photograph.

When dealing with films, photographs and paintings in the English classroom, great inspiration can be found in the subject matters of art education. This is the conclusion I drew when outlining the basis of the interdisciplinary research project that I am going to present on the following pages. My own personal interest in art was the significant motivational factor that guided my initial research in this area, even if it was, of course, impossible to fully explore the huge field of the visual arts in narrow confines of this project.

Another particular priority for its design was to make the project mainly student-centred, with learner autonomy and peer-teaching being the important foci. I regard these as key concepts for my own professional development in the on-going aim of improving my teaching practice. Furthermore, they are relevant to the development of second language teaching.

My thesis is divided into four main chapters. In the first part I provide an overview of the theoretical background to the subjects of art education, both in the arts classroom and when used in other subjects. The thoughts and reflections pointed out here serve as a basis for the planning of the more practical part of my work.

This is why the second chapter is concerned with ways in which art can be made use of in the English classroom. It is dedicated to an analysis of the role that art already plays in English lessons, yet also aims to add new ideas to the current practice.

I will then take a closer look at the art exhibition project itself in chapter three which contains a description and a subsequent analysis of the different phases of the project. As it was conducted in three different classes on two different language learning levels, the tasks and activities the students worked on will be illustrated in chronological order, meaning that the focus will first lie on the preparation of the exhibition with the 6th graders as well as the 8th graders. Secondly, I will talk about the audioguides, the scripts and the finished product. Towards the end of the chapter the focus will rest on the 6th graders' reactions to their museum visit.

The last part, chapter four, contains a conclusion, and a summary of what has been achieved. The chapter ends with an outlook to the future, to determine ways in which this project could be recreated successfully in other classes or other schools.

1. The Theoretical Cornerstones

1.1. Visual material

1.1.1. Visual material and language learning

There is one certainty that every language teacher, and indeed any teacher, can agree with without hesitation. During lessons, students should participate in meaningful activities, so that learning can take place, whichever the subject may be. This is a commonplace, of course, yet it is the starting point for most lesson planning and research about teaching. It is of some importance, moreover, because it is the last common ground that researchers share, before moving off into different areas, or even opposing hemispheres of learning theory. Different methods have surfaced, gained popularity, and were forgotten over the last decades. Some might be considered as eccentricities today, while others are still preferred.

Some of the theories, methods and approaches that were involved in this gradual ongoing evolution form the theoretical foundations of this study. They had a strong influence on the inspiration and the motivation for implementing the project. This is why, before dealing with more practical aspects of working with art in the classroom, this chapter provides the overview of the theoretical foundations.

When using visual tools in the classroom one needs to take into consideration the main concepts and the abiding influence of the direct method. In his dictionary of ELT, Scott Thornbury writes that

ʹThis is an umbrella term for a wide range of language teaching methods […]. They shared the belief that only the target language should be used in the classroom, and that therefore translation should be avoided at all costs. Instead of translation, form-meaning associations should be established using real objects, pictures, or demonstration. […] In the UK and Europe it became the fairly short-lived situational approach, but its core principle, the exclusive use of the target language, survives as an article of faith among many teachers to this dayʹ. (2006: 66-67)

The advantages of pointing at real objects and telling their names in a classroom where only the use of the target language is allowed is obvious. According to those in favour of the direct method the real things themselves were even better than pictures of things. The difference between visual material and real things is by all means very important. We are dealing with a significant distinction both for this project as well as for anyone using visual material in their lessons. It is also the fundamental idea for one of the most famous surrealist paintings by René Magritte, The Treachery of Images. The painting still serves as a reminder that two-dimensional representations of objects are not the objects themselves. The class that organised the exhibition chose to include it because it is world-famous and because it has had a great influence on art history.

The imperative to only use the target language is somewhat dated, as Thornbury writes. Therefore, the reason for using pictures and real things has fallen away. 'Nowadays,' as he asserts, 'charts have largely been replaced with projections from either an overhead projector (OHP) […], or a data projector.' (2006:11) Technology has made easier many aspects of teaching, while at the same time creating new problems. Yet Thornbury adds that, 'for young learners, where learning through activity and play is encouraged', real things still have their value in the classroom. (2006: 11) This throwback to the times when visual materials were first used to assist the learning process, raises one simple question: what function can they still fulfil today?

Broadly speaking, there are many implicit advantages in including visual material in lessons, whether these are language lessons or not. Visual materials attract the students’ attention and help them focus better, they make lessons more interesting and diversified and they also help develop the associated language. Visuals can be used to arouse interest at the beginning of a lesson, to help students access their already known language and create a thirst for language which the teacher can fulfill, but also to stimulate conversation and debate. To arouse interest and to succeed in focusing the students' attention are positive aspects. Furthermore, students are offered a vivid context for them to practise the areas of language they have already aquired, thus reinforcing their knowledge and skills in those areas.

The third point mentioned above regards creating ʹa thirst for languageʹ, a need to learn new words and phrases and improve communication. This happens when a student wishes to talk about a certain topic, but lacks the vocabulary or tenses needed. When the teacher provides the new necessary language tools for the student’s momentary needs, the next level of linguistic development takes place. The teacher supports the student in the use of the new language elements, and slowly removes this ʹscaffoldingʹ, until the student has broadened the grasp of the language by a small amount. (Pritchard, 2009: 24-25)

The last modality in which visual material can support the language learning process is by stimulating discussion. Discussion is one of the classroom activities that need to be encouraged the most, because students can participate in meaningful conversations in the target language. Moreover, their analytical and critical thinking skills can develop, since discussions usually force the speakers to reason and express their opinions.

The overall motivation that gives the students the opportunity to talk is the goal to reach a healthy balance between teacher talking time (TTT) and student talking time (STT). Research suggests that teachers should not give lectures, nevertheless they should not talk too little either. Teacher talk has an essential role in the language learning process, namely input, feedback and student-teacher interaction. All of these functions further the students' language learning process.

1.1.2. Describing pictures

We all know how difficult spatial description is. This difficulty is further compounded by the three different ways in which spaces are conceptualized across cultures. For example, in English-speaing cultures, we see things ꞌon televisionꞌ, but in many cultures, programmes are shown ꞌin televisionꞌ. On the contrary, in English we say things are ꞌin a paintingꞌ, while in some cultures things are ꞌonꞌ it. This means that if English isn’t our first language we may be uneasy about our ability to express spatial descriptions of features of paitings or photographs.

When displaying a photograph or a picture in class, the teacher gets all sorts of answers and reactions from the students, depending on the questions they ask. Designing lessons that rely mostly on questioning the students is a form of teaching in the teacher-centred area of classroom methodology. According to some, there are indications that a teacher-centred approach has many advantages. The important point to stress here, is that the teacher-centred method is effective, if used for appropriate aims, and at the right time.

Some of the prompts or questions that a teacher addresses the class might generate quite a large amount of reaction from the students, whilst in some cases very little. Yet, in the latter case, we should not jump to the conclusion that they have nothing to say about what they are being shown. On a subconscious level, we always process what we see. We also think about it on a conscious level. Out of instinct, when we look around us, or if our attention is drawn to something, we are capable to observe a very detailed reality. Even so, when they are asked to explain what they see most people find it hard to put everything into words.

Even the most simple example will illustrate many of the situations encountered in class in the course of this project. Students are shown a photograph of a desk and asked 'What is this?' or 'What can you see in the photo?'. A typical student answer would be: 'It’s a desk.' An indefinite question such as this requires a follow-up one. This could have been avoided by asking an exact question in the first place, for instance about the defining qualities of the desk. Students might be given the opportunity to describe whether it is made of wood, metal or plastic and then add information about its colour, shape and size and even say whether it’s old or new.

Sometimes we feel restrained by the context of the situation: we do not know how much, or what kind of detail the other person expects from us. Students behave in the same way in class. We can often observe that some students might show signs of inhibition when they are faced with describing an object or a picture they see for the first time while having to use their still imperfect English in front of their classmates. We can conclude that the interaction with the students depends to a large extent on the teacher's skill in asking questions.

1.2. What is art?

Art is perhaps the most under-used resource in language teaching. Art and design are everywhere – in the clothes we wear, in the cars we drive, in the way we arrange food on our plates, in the way we decorate our homes, and in the landscapes and streetscapes we live in. Yet very few of the teachers make use of art in the language classrooms. We might therefore think of it as a sleeping giant among resources.

When it comes to art and design, we know what we like and what we don’t like – the colours, the shapes, the patterns and the combination of these. All the time, we are reacting to what we see and makig aesthetic judgements about it. Thus everyone of our students is visually literate to a very high degree and very discriminating in their tastes. Here then is the sleeping giant – our visual ꞌliteracyꞌ, just waiting to be turned into spoken or written language.

At the same time, it would be a mistake to think of our relationship with art as limited to visual literacy and as apassive ability to respond. The trouble we take with our physical appearance shows our creativity, as do the choices we make about the objects around us in our homes. And much of this creative energy is intended to build an image of ourselves and to make an impression on others. Here then is another aspect of the sleeping giant, our use of art and design as a form of self-expression waiting to be explained to others.

From a general point of view, a work of art is quite simply a visual message waiting to be seen, understood and explained. It can give us insights about the artists, about ourselves, or, generally speaking, about society. In view of this pragmatic perspective, anything and everything could be looked at as art. However, this has not always been the case. It is easily forgotten that the definition of art has been expanded over time, especially during the twentieth century. Because there is a more narrow way of defining art. For a long time, men dominated the profession of the artist. Therefore, even during the first half of the twentieth century, most successful artists were white men. Even though there are exceptions, this summary is true on the perception of most students who discuss art history in class. They learn that most of these artists used to paint with oil on canvas, that some of them created watercolours, drawings, engravings and used many other innovative ways to create art.

It goes without saying that there are still white men alive today who put oil on canvas with remarkable commercial success. On the other hand, the artistic landscape has diversified a lot, thereby modifying and increasing our understanding of what ar tis about. It is illustrative to consider Freedman’s views on visual culture:

‘In the past, types of media, levels of technical skill, and compositional sophistication played a large part in determining whether an object was considered a work of art. […] what was once considered mundane, has become profound in its effects.’ (Freedman 2003: 11)

In other words, the definition art has boadened. Nowadays it includes techniques and professions that would not have been considered as art or artists.

This adjustment of ideas is linked to the technological progress and social change. The material means were much more limited and hard to fiind fifty, and most certainly a hundred years ago. Apart from the tools, time is another luxury good that is a necessary resource for producing art. Currently, much more people have easier access to all the proper resources in order to create works of art. Electronic devices have spread to every household, industrially produced paint has become cheaper and easy to find, and most people do not have to work all day long to earn a living. Therefore, many people produce art, often without having had a formal training in one of the classical branches of the fine arts. Making art, or spending money on art, has become a characteristic of everyday life, not least because the new forms of art, like pop music or graffiti, have an extremely positive image and they become hobbies people have in order to relax and unwind. Many of these are recognised as art today, but they were considered crafts in the past, not worthy of 'real' artists attention.

Comedian and art lover Dave Allen writes about the role of oil painting in the context of contemporary events. It is the preferred technique, even though it seems to have lost some of its importance today, in his opinion:

ꞌ[…] few people will forget the immediate visual horror of the terrorist destruction of New York's World Trade Center in September 2001. Major events are now mainly visual and immediate and oil paint just is not quick enough to compete with digital representations. It has a role, but documenting the present is not itꞌ. (2003: 100)

His view is based on the fact that international events become globally important because almost everyone on the planet has the means to see the visual representation of an event right after it happens, in the middle of the digital revolution we live in. Almost 3000 people died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the event had grave repercussions, so that some define it as the real beginning of the 21st century. (Shashi Tharoor, Times of India, 2007). In describing the visual horror of the attacks as 'immediate' he points to the instinctive compassionate repugnance one feels at the meaningless loss of so many lives. He also points out the speed with which news of the event travelled around the globe and the fact that millions of people witnessed it live on television.

In terms of rapidity, the internet and television beat the 'slower' media like films, books and, of course, oil paintings. Those who use these different means of communication, as we might call them, all react to an event at the same time. Yet the reaction time for film makers is longer than for people who post photos or videos recorded by their mobile phone cameras on all sorts of social networks. On the other hand, it is obvious that the slower media are also the more durable. A book has a longer life expectancy than a twitter message, even if it does not become a bestseller. In Allen's example of the 9/11 attacks, everyone remembers and is continuously confronted by press photographs and video footage, which are being reprinted or recycled in books and films.

Posts on Facebook, tweets on Twitter , Youtube videos or TikToks are produced fast and can have a wide audience, just because of their immediacy. While it is true that, for example, Facebook does not forget any information, it lives off the fact that a constant inflow of new information is given daily. Once older messages are overlayered by new posts or new impressions, they become yesterday's news and they are forgotten.

However, for most people the virtual reality, just as virtual art, has not become as important as the real world. For these people it is important that they can see, touch and buy real objects. This seems ironic, since a film can leave the same impressions on the viewer just as if it were watched online or at home on DVD. Yet watching it on your home DVD box makes the film seem more real. Therefore, it seems that we have assigned the new and the traditional media two distinct functions. This has simply become, for the time being, the state of things. We could deduce that the value of a work of art increases alongside the time it takes to produce it, because it leaves a discernible mark in our personal reality. Naturally the recent development of what a work of art actually is has direct consequences on how art is taught in schools. There is an imperative need for art education to adapt to the changed circumstances.

At the present time, art education must have more to do with ideas, analysis and evaluation. Teaching visual culture means teaching students to making and view visual arts and interpret their meanings, messages, relationships, and influences. This is one of basic concepts that I focused on especially when researching and planning this project. Ex cathedra lectures are not useless in themselves, nevertheless a large part of teacher training research has been devoted to finding alternatives.

1.3. Interdisciplinary teaching and learning: CLIL

The foreign languages that Romanian students learn are English, French, German and sometimes Italian or Spanish. All of the foreign language teachers are in constant search of topics to discuss in class, for obvious reasons. Almost every time we use language in class, we need it to communicate about something. The only exception is linguistics, where the language and languages themselves are examined. The traditional topics encountered in lower level classrooms are the language needed in everyday exchanges, and activities like reading comprehension and analysing literature are reserved for higher level classes. Even though we should clarify that this can only be a narrow view of reality and in time become a cause for students’ lack of interest and boredom.

In the last decades though, the traditionally treated topics in other subjects have found their way into English language classrooms. It makes sense, after all, for students who are learning a language, to improve their knowledge of the culture and the history of the people who speak that language. An important factor to consider is that even those Romanian students study World History, they do not get to know very much about the history of the English speaking countries. The main reason for this narrowing down are time constraints. Most classes only have one or two history lessons per week, which is why priorities have to be set. The only possible exception is the history of the USA, as it is at the origin of many recent developments, not only in art, but also in society as a whole.

This is why the history of Britain and the Commonwealth has to be dealt with in the English lessons, if at all. There is a useful side effect to including a wider range of topics, for example music, science or food, in the English lessons. It makes learning and teaching more varied and more interesting for those involved in the learning process, the learners and teachers. As a result, lesson time could be used more efficiently, and more learning could take place.

There are teachers who know this instinctively, or by being able to judge their learners' reactions and progress due to their professional experience. For all those without the benefit of these insights of instinct and experience, or those who are convinced only by scientific arguments than instinct and experience, learning theory has produced highly interesting research in this context. The researchers inquiring into the use of elements from other subjects in English language classrooms have come to the conclusion that it has a beneficial effect on the language learning process. For example, this method allows discussing events and developments in English history in a more flexible way. Nonetheless, it is justified to ask in the context of the art exhibition project whether art should be discussed in an English lesson at all. We could argue that art rightfully belongs into the subject of art education that has its established place on the curriculum.

In the most simple terms, interdisciplinary learning and teaching means combining two or more subjects in one lesson, or course. As always when setting out into this particular direction we need to be aware of the difficult decision of how much of the two or more subjects to include, and how to combine them. Neither are they going to be perfect art lessons, as in the example of this project, nor are they going to be perfect English lessons. The reason why interdisciplinary sequences, projects or activities are netheless beneficial in view of the learning outcome is that there is an added value resulting from the combination. Art education is a very interesting topic, offering complex opportunities for language lessons. However, in this research project English language teaching (ELT) was the main focus of attention.

Teachers who use English to teach other subjects, like science or geography, are working in the area of content and language integrated learning, or CLIL, as Thornbury writes. He further describes it as belonging ‘firmly in the tradition of the strong form of the communicative approach, in that there is no predetermined language syllabus. Instead instruction is organized solely around the content.’ (2006: 51) In his explanation, Thornbury goes on to clarify the close relationship of CLIL to

‘immersion teaching, whereby learners in a situation of additive bilingualism […] take all or some of their school subjects in a second language. Immersion teaching has been shown to be effective in some contexts, such as Canada. Here, English-speaking children receive content instruction in French, with no detriment to their English nor to their subject knowledge, and with impressive gains in Frenchʼ. (2006: 51)

At the very start of primary school, in their first year, all Romanian children are taught any of the foreign languages mentioned above one class per week. All of these languages become a second language for most students. At the end of their career in secondary school, young Romanians should be proficient in these languages. The overall aim of this development in the education system is to prepare them well for their professional lives, where they will be expected by colleagues and superiors to successfully deal with intercultural encounters where they will have to use multiple languages, often at the same time.

The reason why this works particularly well for most students and teachers is explained in the next part of Thornbury's text. He continues:

ꞌContent and language integrated learning instruction probably works best where teachers are adept not only at teaching the subject matter, but also at addressing their learners’ language needs, such as being able to modify their own classroom language, and to provide ‘in flight’ assistance when necessaryꞌ. (Thornbury 2006: 51)

This ''in flight' assistance', as Thornbury calls it, is undoubtedly most needed in the lower level classes in secondary school. Teachers are aware of this, and most of them went through the same system that employs them later in life.

After pointing out the benefits of including other subjects in English lessons, a final question remains to be answered, however. Why should art take precedence over music, for example, or drama? They represent very traditional art forms a well. Moreover, they are both essentially language based, to a very large extent, which would seem to make them ideally suited for such a project. Indeed, most of the music that Romanian students listen to has English lyrics, as long as it has lyrics at all. Almost all the popular musical trends of the last decades originated either in the United States or in the U.K. Similarly, there are many plays that could be staged with students at intermediate level. These are certainly ideas that lend themselves to project work with students at all school levels. Cinema is a further art form that is often rewarding to deal with in class, as it usually arouses students' interest very easily. Many excellent films were originally produced in English.

Nevertheless, my final choice was in favour of the visual arts, or, more precisely, painting. The reason for this decision was my personal preference. I consider myself as more competent in teaching art-related topics than in teaching music or drama. By teaching drama I mean, in this context, the staging of a play.

Art, as a subject, has its place in the traditional Romanian school system, although it only has secondary importance in the well-established, yet controversial system that attributes more importance to some subjects. The load is distributed in such a way that Mathematics and Romanian are the most important. For the students, art is simply an unimportant subject that is part of their timetable in middle school and so they start focusing on the more 'serious' subjects. The only exceptions are the art classes, and there is one for every level in the school where I teach.

Even if many teachers do not share this somewhat snobbish attitude towards art, they were nevertheless trained to focus exclusively on the narrow confines of their own subject. This is why they have no interest in, and do not put into practice the possible advantages of interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Naturally, there are also quite a few teachers who do think outside the box and do remarkable work that is inspiring for their students as well as for their colleagues.

So we need to remember that our students may have difficulties understanding art – either because it belongs to the past, or even because it’s too much in the present. In the digital age, the distinction between art and everyday life is further diminished through sites such as Youtube, Flickr and Instagram, where anyone can post their own culturally significant images and can access the everyday images and experiences of others. Thus the internet is helping to democratise art, as we assemble ꞌgalleriesꞌ that represent our own experience and as we alter images afer our own taste. Even our smartphone displays a (photo) gallery.

Just as we can consider English as a lingua franca with a democratised ownership, so art too has become the property of us all. I have tried to suggest that art stimulates visual meaning and that this visual meaning can stimulate description or provoke comment. This language can then be worked on. The essential point is that art provides the means to an end.

Working with art also leads to a more spontaneous use of language than is usual in most classrooms. This is because art provokes the wish to communicate and because the atmosphere of the art-based classroom is qualitatively different: experimentation, cooperating with fellow students, sharing ideas are all important and it becomes easy to communicate when there’s so much to talk about.

One of the most significant methodological issues in language teaching is whether we learn a language in order to use it or whether we learn a language through using it. In other words, which comes first, learning or use? The mainstream position in most coursebooks is that learning in the classroom is a rehearsal for use in the world. In contrast, resource books often encourage the use of language as a way of learning it. The truth is probably that learners need some of each.

2. Art in the Classroom

The aim of teaching is, generally speaking, to make learning take place. Energy and time of both learners and teachers are limited, so every teacher’s efforts should concentrate on facilating as much learning as possible. If this is understood as a responsibility and a duty towards the learners, it is also a social responsibility. Teachers’ salaries and the material used in public schools are paid by the taxpayers’ money. In addition, parents also have to face additional expenses for books and other material. This is why time and money should be used as well as possible, even if this assertion may sound controversial. Good education should not be a privilege of some.

Therefore, the aims and objectives of this thesis are to find ways in which as many learners as possible can profit from a minimal investment of the resources of time and money. One way of increasing the utility of a project developed for and with one class is to make it available to other classes in the same school as well as ensuring it is adaptable enough to be useful for other classes in other schools. This is one of the questions that will be answered in the concluding chapter.

At this point, you might be saying to yourself, ꞌThis is all very well, but isn’t real art what we find in galleries and museums?ꞌ When we go to an art gallery, we go to look carefully at things that make us think again about what we see around us. A portrait, for example, studies a person in a way that we do not usually do in casual encounters. In a gallery or museum, we think more carefully about what we see, and this then challenges us to look again.

For example, anyone who has seen the sculpture The Angel of the North just south of Gateshead in the north-east of England is bound to think again about how they visualize angels.

This angel has only one leg, for a start, and is made of brown metal. The wings look a bit like aeroplane wings. It has no clothes. The surroundings are not those where you might expect to find an angel, standing on a disused coal mine with busy roads on either side and a housing estate to the rear. We see The Angel of the North and we think about angels in a way we probably hadn’t ever before as we try to put into language the feelings that the sculpture inspires. It’s not an irony that the Greek word from which the English word angel is derived means ꞌmessengerꞌ, or bringer of meaning. Once again, we see a sleeping giant waiting to provoke language.

2.1. Methodology

The main goal of this project is to determine how successful 8th graders are at writing and recording a set of audioguides about a specific topic. A secondary aim is, if possible, to organise an exhibition as a final product using these audioguides, with one or more lower level classes as intended audience. Learners will develop their explanation and presentation skills after having improved their competences during this project. By practising on this specific topic, the 8th graders will become more confident about their ability to use these skills more successfully in unfamiliar situations. Without a doubt, this will help them in the next school years, as well as after they will have left school.

In more practical terms, this means that the students will learn how to describe something or to talk about something in situations where their interlocutors know less about the topic than they do, but also have a more limited level of English than the 8th graders themselves have. They will need to structure their discourse, explain the context, and relate the exhibit to the recipient. In order to achieve the latter, they must recognise that engaging with their audience, finding out more about it, and empathising with it, is a necessity. In other words, the students will have to convince the listeners that their audioguides are interesting and worthwhile listening to.

Nevertheless, writing a good audioguide is not the only desirable outcome for this project. There are several important preliminary steps are to be made in order to reach this final point. Students will have to research detailed information about their exhibit, and work on it from different perspectives, for example critically or emotionally. We need to point out some positive side effects of this process. When faced with art from different centuries and asked to interact with it in a meaningful way, both the writers of the audioguides as well as the listeners will evidently need to aquire a considerable amount of general knowledge.

These are the initial considerations that mark the starting point of the development of this project. In the following pages they will be thoroughly questioned, illustrated and developed.

2.1.1. Vocabulary

Enriching one’s vocabulary is one of the pillars of progress in learning a foreign language. Patsy M. Lightbown and Nina Spada support this claim in their excellent work How Languages are Learned. According to them,

'the acquisition of vocabulary has become one of the most active areas in second language acquisition research.' Not only this, because they add that 'the importance of vocabulary can hardly be overestimated.' (2006: 96)

There appears to be general agreement on this among researchers, for Thornbury confirms that 'Vocabulary learning is a major goal in most teaching programmes.' (2006: 240)

This is also one of the objectives of this research project. The intention is to show the opportunities for vocabulary acquisition offered by the incorporation of art in an English course. On one hand, the learners will be dealing with the more technical, art-related words and expressions, like 'painter', or 'to arrange a scene', and 'background', to mention just few examples. On the other hand, students will have to use the vocabulary needed to describe the scene that is depicted and its context, which are as wide-ranging as the subject matter of the paintings.

Having established that vocabulary is an extremely important aspect of language learning, it is worthwhile to illustrate the research in this area in more detail. Thornbury reports that

ʹIt is now generally agreed that, in terms of goals, learners need a receptive vocabulary of around 3000 high-frequency words (or, better, word families) in order to achieve independent user status. This will give them around ninety percent coverage of normal text. For a productive vocabulary, especially for speaking, they may only need half this numberʹ. (2006: 240)

He continues by reminding teachers of the fact that

‘It would be impossible, in class, to teach all the words the learners need. Learners therefore need opportunities for incidental learning, eg through extensive reading.’ (2006: 240)

This observation appears evident enough, as reading is an obvious incursion for new vocabulary.

However, reading is not the only source of input.

'Input is the spoken or written language that learners are exposed to. In order to underline the significance of input, he adds that 'You cannot learn a language without input.' (2006: 105-106)

If input is also generated by listening, not only by reading, lower level students will also benefit from listening to audioguides, for example. Based on this knowledge about the importance of input and the way it influences the learner I decided to make exposure to new vocabulary one of the main focal points of this project.

One of the important factors in this context is the amount of exposure students have to vocabulary. Thornbury explains that

‘The frequency of an item in the input that learners are exposed to may also be a critical factor in the acquisition of that item. It has long been known that the more times a learner encounters a new word the more likely they are to learn it.’ He adds that research suggests that ‘at least seven encounters over spaced intervals are necessary’ (2006: 87)

Consequently, one aim of designing a lesson sequence should be to try and increase the frequency of encounters with the specific vocabulary that the students are intended to learn. The following chart illustrates this rather well:

(Wolf, 2008)

There are two key concepts to the issue of vocabulary that are worth further clarification.

Lexical set:

These are ‘sets of words that share a meaning relationship, eg [sic] because they relate to a particular topic or situation.’ (Thornbury, 2006: 120) An obvious example from this sequence would be the set: 'paint, painting, painter'. Focusing on lexical sets aims to maximise vocabulary acquisition by the learners in the course of the sequence. If one specific topic runs like a thread through a lesson sequence, students' attention will rotate around the intended lexical set, because they will need to use this group of words over and over again. Therefore lesson sequences have the advantage that they increase the number of encounters with lexical sets in a relatively short time.

Word family:

Although the items in a lexical set have in common the fact that they are attached to a certain topic, word families are a narrower category in the taxonomy of vocabulary. Word families can be defined as ‘a base word plus its inflections and its most common derivatives.’ Thornbury also illustrates the concept: ‘Careful, careless etc. are all derivatives of care, in that, through the process of affixation, new lexical words are formed.’ Changes to a word that are due to the demands of the rules of grammar fall under a different category, though: ‘[…] grammatical forms of care, such as cares, caring and cared, are called inflections.’ (Thornbury, 2006: 246) Thus, on the same occasion, this might be a writing or listening activity, or a text that is being read in class and can generate a much larger amount of vocabulary. If students ask about the meaning of one word, one can easily attach a short, but worthwhile digression about its inflections, derivatives, synonyms and antonyms. This way, the same amount of lesson time is spent more efficiently.

The mere decision to mention vocabulary in a lesson, does not automatically require a growth of the students' vocabulary. In other words, input is not intake. The question of how vocabulary input becomes intake is addressed by Tricia Hedge. She writes that

ʹCognitive psychologists […] have suggested that learners are more likely to remember a word if they have worked on its meaning actively; in other words, input becomes intake if there is a depth of processingʹ. (2000: 121)

This is just one suggestion, however. She adds that generally there is some doubt, disagreement and a lack of exact knowledge about the issue of vocabulary intake amongst researchers:

'it is at present unclear exactly how learners store and organize words in the mental lexicon and what kinds of relationships are built among the words as they are stored.' (Hedge, 2000: 122)

Even though science has progressed enormously, some essential questions remain unanswered. How the human mind works in such a complex way is one of these questions.

Since there is no direct way of assessing how the mind processes vocabulary, researchers need to rely on indirect evidence. One way of analysing the way a second language is aquired is to compare it to how young children make a first language their own. Lightbown and Spada report that

ʹSome second language theorists have argued that second language learners, like children learning their first language, can learn a great deal of vocabulary with little intentional effort. Stephen Krashen […] has asserted that the best source of vocabulary growth is reading for pleasureʹ. (2006: 100)ʹ

When recognising that learners of a second language build up their vocabulary without effort, it does not bring to the conclusion that the teacher has become obsolete and that students will learn new words no matter what classroom activities they are engaged in. Krashen's suggestion that reading is the 'best source of vocabulary growth' also has some limitations, as Lightbown and Spada point out in the following example:

ʹ[…] Dee Gardner […] has shown how rare certain types of words are in narrative. Thus, students who read mainly fiction may have little chance of learning words that are essential for their academic pursuitsʹ. (2006: 100)

Accordingly, Lightbown and Spada recommend that students should also engage 'in activities that require them to attend carefully to the new words and even use them in productive tasks.' (2006: 100) Therefore, another factor in vocabulary acquisition is the variety of contexts in which new words are encountered, as Tricia Hedge argues:

ʹAs learners develop their vocabulary knowledge, they acquire not only new words but also new meanings associated with words they have already learned. These are acquired gradually as words are met in different contexts and eventually a word might have extensive and complex meaning associationsʹ. (2000: 123)

She clarifies that vocabulary intake is facilitated by repeatedly encountering words in different contexts. Therefore, the conclusion must be to offer a variety of activities designed in such a way as to guarantee a variety of vocabulary. In case it is difficult to include this diversity in one lesson, one can simply distribute the activities on the different lessons in a sequence. This is why I aspired to assemble a project that would engage more than one sense, as well as stimulating critical analysis.

It is clear, therefore, that teaching vocabulary can assume different aspects. Hedge summarises the different routes that are available to teachers in the following paragraph:

ʹThe general issue for teachers seems to be whether learners should simply be encouraged in non-specific ways to actively build their own associations for new words and thereby extend the networks of the mental lexicon, or whether vocabulary learning activities should include direct instruction which aims to shape the associations learners makeʹ. (Hedge, 2000: 123)

This school year the SARSCoV2 pandemic made us stay home and teach online, which presented an impediment for my project.On the whole, I intend to use a combined approach, both in the implementation of this project, as also in my other classes. I should also clarify that the project is not a complete representation of the lessons I planned for my 8th and 6th graders. To be more specific, it represents only about twelve double lessons taught in three different classes over the space of two months. In those lessons not concerned with the project I planned and implemented other, and different tasks and activities in order to provide learners with the variety of learning opportunities they need.

Frequency, variety, and engaging 'in-depth' with vocabulary, therefore, have an impact on the amount of intake that the learners achieve, even though some doubts still remain. Thus, it is only logical to include learners in the preparation and what might be called ‘de-briefing’ of the lesson, the evaluation of the success of a lesson. These tasks and activities could be accepted and dealt with by the whole class, or by a smaller group of students within a class. In the latter case, certain students will, amongst other things, increase their use of the lexical set that was determined as an objective of the lesson. The concept of having committed students in the classroom will be described in a more detailed manner in the following chapter, together with the practical advantages that teachers get when they cooperate with committed students.

2.1.2. Committed students: learning by teaching others

Committed students carry a certain responsibility for the success of the lessons, since they help to implement them and also for the progress that their classmates make during the lessons of this project. Therefore, it is ideal to let them take over the role and responsibility of vocabulary experts. They can develop word families and make lists out of the words the class has encountered in the context of the art project. They could also group together lexical sets from encountered words in graphic organisers, and represent the connections between the words visually.

In his article that analyses the development of the art curriculum in the UK, John Steers argues for ‘education (and within it art education) […] to become a more meaningful and high quality experience for teachers and learners.’ He recommends striving to implement the ‘principles of difference, plurality and independence of mind.’ (2003: 29) Among the ‘prerequisites’ he sees for these principles, he mentions the following:

ʹMore opportunities need to be created for learners to understand art as something that actually matters in their lives and has relevance to their present and future actions. More choice, autonomy and empowerment needs to be offered through the development of a more critical, inquiring, reflexive and creative mindset, assisting self-generated and self-aware learning. The range of choice and type of study available across all forms of art needs to be broadened without any implied hierarchyʹ. (Steers 2003: 29)

His argument, then, is in favour of diversity both in terms of subject matter being addressed in art classes, but also in terms of methodology. He points out the advantages of self-generated learning, which is one of the ideas behind designating committed students. Their mission is to create learning opportunities for their peers. This is directly connected to the hierarchy that Steers mentions in the last sentence quoted above. There is undoubtedly a hierarchy in school systems that defines and governs the relationship and the cooperation between students and teachers, the latter situated above the former. Therefore, knowledge and learning are traditionally passed down from teacher to student. However, if students can teach each other, the hierarchy is avoided. This is another advantage to the concept of committed students.

Therefore, it is essential to identify potential committed students among the most proficient ones and involve them as much as possible in the implementation of the project and consequently profit from their superior knowledge or proficiency. This peer teaching can take the form of presentations on a specific topic or language area at the beginning or during a lesson, the writing or assembling of exercises, or they can even take over the role of the teacher or they can be the group leader in a part of the lesson. This can be a successful technique in group work phases or when organising learning stations.

There is more than one advantage to this manner of cooperation between students and teachers. It should be underlined, however, that one of these advantages is not that it reduces the work that the teacher has to do in terms of volume or complexity. It only modifies the role the teacher plays in the classroom, since the work atmosphere becomes more collaborative than hierarchical in this case. The teacher needs to meet the committed students before the lesson in order to ensure the quality of the work they produce as well as observing and, if it is needed, supporting their contributions to the lesson. The advantages for the committed learner are that they can spend more time with topics they are enthusiastic about and thereby increase their competence in specific areas.

Furthermore, through the process of teaching their peers about the areas they are knowledgeable in the committed students learn even more: learning by teaching others. Since this concept is already firmly established I decided to make use of it in the context of this thesis. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that the advantages of peer teaching, if used appropriately, apply to any school context, not only to this project.

If this pedagogical tool is useful inside a class, it is as useful if applied to two classes at different levels in their language learning development. One of the aims of this thesis, therefore, is to prove that if higher level students work with lower level students in learning English, both groups will benefit from the experience. In order to bring both groups into contact with each other they would have to meet inside a classroom, which is not always practicable due to timetable constraints. This difficulty becomes even more important if more than two classes are involved.

There are indications, however, that the organisational effort is worthwhile. In the case of the classes chosen for this project, the language level of the 6th graders is sufficiently developed to give them the necessary head start. Simply by using the English that they already master, they can draw the 8th graders out of their comfort zone. In other words, the 6th graders are competent at a level that is still situated in the ZPD of the 8th graders. Vygotsky’s ZPD is not the only of his ideas that this project is based on.

Vygotsky’s ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development)

There are also other principles of his social constructivist concept that inform both my own teacher persona, and this thesis in particular. The most important components are summarised by Alan Pritchard:

• Children learn through being active.

• Learning is a socially mediated activity.

• Emphasis is placed on the role of the teacher or ‘more knowledgeable other’ as a ‘scaffolder’.

• The teacher is a facilitator who provides the challenges that the child needs for achieving more.

• Development is fostered by collaboration (in the Zone of Proximal Development), and not strictly age-related.(2009: 117)

The description Pritchard does of Vygotsky’s theory of learning also outlines the general framework where I decided to place the art exhibition project. Both the fact that learner collaboration plays an important role in its implementation, and my participation as a scaffolder, or facilitator, are definite characteristics that allow an absolute identification of the project as being essentially Vygotskian in nature.

The term Vygotskian defines one aspect of the activities that the students had to work on in the course of the project. The concept of ‘tasks’ in English language teaching goes even further, and serves to provide an even more accurate description of the type of activities the students completed. David Nunan provides a list of ‘five characteristics of a task’ in his analysis of task-based language learning (TBL):

• meaning is primary

• learners are not given other people’s meaning to process

• there is some sort of relationship to comparable real-world activities

• task completion has some priority

• the assessment of the task is in terms of outcome. (Nunan, 2004: 3)

The tasks that the students worked on in the course of the exhibition project closely match Nunan’s descriptors. Meaning built up by the students themselves was the central objective of the project, and they were encouraged to base their work on examples of real audioguides that are already in use in important museums. It goes without saying that the completion of the tasks was of the utmost priority, because otherwise the exhibition itself could not have taken place. The success of this art exhibition was also the primary means by which I was planning on assessing the students’ work. The characteristics of tasks listed by Nunan show that this project is founded on TBL principles, because the different activities have to be defined as tasks.

The different tasks were naturally not only isolated from each other, but interconnected. They all shared the same subject matter and built up on each other. Thus they can even be identified as a sequence of tasks, a concept described by Dave Willis and Jane Willis. (2007: 21-24) In their opinion, task sequences allow a repetition of ‘meanings and the language that is used to express them’, which has considerable benefits on the language learning process. (Willis and Willis, 2007: 23)

Teaching task-based sequences such as this does not mean, however, that the issue of grammar is completely ignored. On the contrary, a student-centred TBL sequence is compatible with ‘a focus on form’, as Scott Thornbury reassures his readers, because it ‘may simply mean correcting a mistake’ in a student’s text. (1999: 24)

Hence, in order to make use of art as a medium of learning, one could imitate the traditional ways of displaying art in museums and exhibitions, by creating or recreating an exhibition in a publicly available space inside a school. In this context, guided tours, audio guides, leaflets or explanatory plates immediately come to mind. All of these options are highly achievable in a school context, given the necessary time and material. These various means of interaction between institution and visitor have their respective characteristics, and some might be regarded as more advantageous than others, depending on the aims of the exhibition.

Obviously, the learning environment of the school where I implemented the project is specific to this school. With schools moving their activity in the online environment, I had to interrupt the project, but my students and I still managed to work on it for two months. This is why I developed the project in the way it is described here. Therefore, one of the aims of the project is to demonstrate that it is adaptable enough to be implemented elsewhere. Consequently, the following selection of final product are alternatives that can be chosen depending on the context and the classes one is working with.

2.1.3. The public face of the exhibition

The decision to organise an exhibition with a class requires that other details need to be determined. Such an exhibition can take many different forms, depending on what products the students are going to be working on. As it is fundamental for the decision making process and to the planning phase I intend to offer a short overview of the different options. It will illustrate how and why I eventually opted for the form that the exhibition took in the end.

Explanatory plate:

The difference between leaflets and explanatory plates is not simply one of location and material. A plate fixed next to an exhibit is generally meant to give specific information about the exhibit and its creator. It addresses the viewers who choose to read it in order to find out more about the item that has drawn their attention.

Leaflet / Flyer:

A leaflet is usually handed out or sold at the entrance and provides more general information about the exhibition, not necessarily about all individual exhibits. From a purely practical point of view, a permanent explanatory text, in a fixed position next to the exhibit only needs to be printed once, while leaflets need to be multiplied for every new visitor as many times as they are needed.

Guided tour:

Guided tours evidently require the physical presence of a tour guide. They have the advantage that the audience can interact with the guide, and spontaneously ask questions, in some cases redirect the focus of the presentation or ask to adapt the level of detail to the audience’s expertise. These are important factors, even though providing guides is almost exclusively practicable in museums funded by admission fees. When planning an amateur exhibition with students in a school this is impossible. Of course, students themselves could play the role of museum guide but this is not always manageable due to the everyday lesson workload that students have.

Asking students to guide the tours also has the disadvantage that they might deliver the prepared presentations differently than they had been planned. They might forget important parts, or there might be hesitations that slow down communication with their listeners. In a worst case scenario, it might render the presentation too difficult to allow the 6th graders to understand it. This is not at all the objective of the task, however. On the contrary, the exhibition should be a positive experience for both 8th and 6th graders. This is also important for their overall motivation to learn, and their language development, as Tricia Hedge points out:

ʹPerhaps the most vital element in learning to listen effectively in a second or foreign language is confidence, and confidence comes with practice and achieving success from an early stage. The role of the teacher is to provide as much positive practice as possibleʹ […]. (2000: 255)

After all, the 6th graders would also become frustrated with their audience not enjoying their exhibition only because of a language barrier, or someone's low presentation skills.

Audioguide:

Audioguides, on the other hand, are free from the students' time constraints, as they need no presence in the exhibition. They only need to be recorded once and can be played when needed. Another advantage is that by preparing their scripts in detail and perfecting the recording in the studio surprising difficulties of communication can be avoided. In addition, as opposed to the monologue delivered by a real-life guide, multiple voices and points of view can be combined. They might support, contrast, or even contradict each other, which will improve the visitors’ experience of what he sees. Reynolds’ example of an audioguide included three ways of seeing, each informed by a different type of expertise. These ways of seeing can be viewed as what designer and museum specialist James Bradburne describes as ‘user-languages’ […]. According to Bradburne, employing different user languages is more effective than mono-vocal labels […] (2010: 156)

Simply put, she recommends using more than one voice, or speaker. The intention is to give the audience the impression that they are taking part in a conversation about the exhibit, rather than being instructed about it by a teacher- like voice. As a consequence, the emotional reaction to the audioguide would be more positive. Reynolds observes that her ‘model is adaptable to other contexts in art and design education.’ (2010: 151) Although I do not teach art education, I am convinced that Reynolds' observation applies just as well to ELT. As mentioned above in the context of CLIL, language learning also takes place in indirect learning situations.

The conclusion to Reynolds’ project was that using any special kind of technology was unnecessary, and even counterproductive. She underlines the advantages of

‘simpler resources that were fully functional. These were accessed on better-established devices likely to be familiar to students. Functionality was prioritized above technological innovation.’ (2010: 152)

If this was true for higher education students in Britain some years ago, it is certainly true for middle school students living in a different country today. The spread of handheld mobile devices has continued, as a survey conducted in the classes described in this thesis reveals.

2.1.4. Technology and learning

97 per cent of the 6th graders and 100 per cent of the 8th graders have mobile phones that allow them to listen to audio files. Many of these devices are able to access the internet via data netword, thereby facilitating direct downloads of audio files from online sources. The opportunity of being able to make use of the material that the students already own themselves is too fortunate to ignore. The decision to use students’ mobile phones or mp3 players allows for considerable savings in listening material. The exhibition would have to take place in the 8th graders’ classroom. More importantly, though, it becomes more difficult to verify whether the learners actually listen to exhibition-related files, or to their own music collection.

One possible solution to this problem is developing a test, or a survey that could be handed out to the visitors as a feedback form. One responsibility as a teacher, one that is taken less seriously by the students than by their parents, is to ensure that students use the time they spend in school productively. Therefore, this survey would be in line with the overall objective of this project: to generate a maximum of learning with a minimum investment of time and effort, both on behalf of students and teachers.

There are more than one level of complexity that the survey could have. For example, it could be filled in on paper when handed out to every visiting student. But it might also be filled in online, on a homepage or via email, if the technological means are available in the school. Whichever the medium, the feedback forms can contain writing tasks that encourage the students to engage closely with some exhibits. These might take the form of questions about the content of the audioguides, alongside questions about the visitors' appreciation of the whole exhibition, as well as its individual parts.

Teachers who are inspired by the experience gathered by museums, as described by Reynolds, are supported by Tom Davies and Pete Worrall’s article ‘Thinking out of the box’. In this article about the influence of information communication technology (ICT) on art teacher education they assert that ‘Digital technology has the potential to counter reductionism and empower and stimulate learning.’ (2003: 90) By ‘reductionism’ they mean budgetary constraints that economic developments exert on the number of art lessons that students have, the number of art teachers a school can employ or, generally speaking, the amount of money spent on art education per student.

Davies and Worrall provide a taxonomy of the different ways in which digital media could be used in classrooms. These different ways are grouped ‘under five strands. While each is significant in its own right, well-planned and sequenced project work may range across each strand, reinforcing and supporting experimental learning experiences.’ Since not all of them are relevant in this context, only the following two of the five strands are to be mentioned here. The first strand is concerned with ‘Communication systems, collaborative electronic exchanges (internet / mobile phones etc.)’ The second one focuses on ‘Virtual exhibitions – school / community groups, curated and presented through multimedia integrating digital images, sound, video and text.’ (2003: 91) This project is obviously situated in the last category. While integrating digital images, sound and text are part of the project, video is not. One reason for this lies in the fact that recording a video of satisfactory quality is always more demanding in terms of skills, time and resources than producing good audio recording.

Reynolds’ findings and Davies and Worrall's recommendations about the potential of making use of digital media in the classroom are a strong case in favour of making this project rely on ICT. The significant term here is ‘potential’. It is always possible to make less than efficient use of the potential the digital media have to offer. In a worst case scenario it might even lead to valuable time and learning opportunities wasted. In the chapters more concerned with the practical aspects of this project I intend to delineate how I intended to counter any misuse or abuse of the digital media that played a role in the implementation.

It is obvious that, in the years since Davies and Worrall wrote this article, the potential ICT has to offer learners and teachers has increased dramatically. Not least the proliferation of smartphones with an impressive range of downloadable apps, often free of charge, have opened up new avenues to access and use art resources. While the cost of such a device is still relatively high in Europe, , most Romanian students already carry them around. Nevertheless, this does not automatically signify that the traditional depositories of art – museums and art galleries – suffer from a devreasing numbers of visitors. On the contrary, museums are more popular today than ever. One of the reasons for this development is the fact that museums have become more attractive, especially for younger audiences. This growing interest is a further motivating factor for the development of this project.

The use of smartphones by middle school students has increased and they use them for almost every aspect of their lives, even to do their schoolwork. For instance, most classes have groups on social media and Whatsapp where they exchange information that is relevant to their courses. Therefore, it is worthwhile to exploit this potential for a museum project in school, and to demonstrate to the students what other positive uses their smartphones have.

2.2. Assessing learning outcome

The idea behind this project is not to take over the role of the art teacher and teach art history in another language. Even if this is one definition of CLIL, the main focus is to find meaningful tasks and activities to enrich English lessons. The aim is to provide students with occasions for the intake of new language and a context in which they are able to use it. One way of determining how much students have taken in during the course of a sequence are written tests.

Kerry Freedman writes about current issues concerning testing in the context of art education in the USA.

ʹTeachers are expected to teach to tests intended to assess students’ memory of sometimes arbitrary and trivial art historical information and the limited applications of elements and principles in design. In contrast to the flux and contradictions of actual knowledge and production in the arts, centralized curriculum standards and testing are based on what is hoped to be a consensus about the criteria and indicators of academic, including aesthetic, qualityʹ. (2003: 9)

If a project like this one should be assessed in a test, it should not only focus on art historical facts, but also include questions that force students to put their personal reactions to what they see into words. Yet, it might also be useful to provide the visiting students with an external motivation to focus their attention on the information they are given about the exhibits. A possible written test, then, might consist of a combination of content and opinion questions.

One of the focal points of the exhibition project is vocabulary, which is why it would be interesting to find out how much students have taken in during their museum visit. Most students in the classes taking part in this project could see the advantages of learning vocabulary in this way. Naturally, at the age of twelve to fifteen, even though they agree with the theoretical need to increase their vocabulary, most students are still subject to the automatic instinct to keep their workload at a minimum. This is also true for the committed students, who theoretically should provide contributions to the lessons, typically in the form of learning material. Because of this form of passive resistance inside a class it would be interesting to give the higher level students the task of preparing vocabulary lists and tests for the lower level classes.

2.3. Art and critical thinking

Initially, the idea that fuelled this project was to engage middle school students with classical and modern masterpieces in such a way that the visual experience would generate writing and speaking activities. In simple and purely technical terms: visual input generating a linguistic output of some form. Yet, it soon became clear that this basic idea has much more potential. The idea of the museum was the logical next step, which required an answer to the question of what form the exhibition should assume.

When one starts reflecting on what a museum can and should do, the issue becomes much more complicated than selecting a few paintings by the old masters. Freedman argues, that art has the potential to span the gap between school and students’ lives outside the classroom:

ʹthe job of art educators has now truly become critical to students’ everyday lives. As part of their education, students are being encouraged to develop a critical awareness of the visual culture they encounter every dayʹ. (2003: 11)

Viv Golding agrees that a museum can achieve much more than a white screen on which reproductions of pieces of art are projected. She imagines a museum as a ‘Clearing’, as she calls it. In this new definition of a museum, ‘representation and understanding of a common humanity, without erasing or ignoring differences, can be progressed’. (2005: 51) Golding asserts that the museum can fulfil this role if we redefine its relationship to the audience:

ʹThe Clearing is a creative territory […]. In the context of the museum it celebrates the idea of a discursive forum, which is opposed to the notion of the traditional museum as ‘temple’ʹ. (2005: 53)

One might object that these intellectual demands on an exhibition organised and produced by students are pretentious. Nevertheless, students are capable of more than people are prepared to believe.

Golding claims that a ‘‘hands on – minds on’ nature of the museum experience ensures that everyone is able to contribute regardless of their academic standard.’ (2005: 63) Students need to be confident that their opinions about the exhibits are valued. For Golding, the museum is not only a place for dialogue and thought. It is also a place for learning:

ʹ[…] the Clearing is a special place of active learning […], full of possibilities for constructing new understanding […]. [It] is crucially related to the notion of a frontier location between the museum and the audience, since the positive learning experiences initiated in it must extend beyond the time and space of the museum visitʹ. (Golding, 2005: 53-54)

Naturally, the idea that active learning takes place in a museum can easily be translated into the school environment. She envisages the museum as a more open space, where the audience is not caught in the role of the passive recipient.

Atkinson and Dash argue that art practices can teach students more than knowledge of art history, or insights into the techniques needed to produce art: ‘art practices have an important role to play in developing pupils’ social and critical understanding.’ (2005: xi) Social and critical thinking skills are core goals of lower secondary education, which justifies the role of art as a subject taught at secondary level. In their text, Atkinson and Dash describe the significance of 'art practices'. This does not mean that students need to make exhibits themselves. Setting up a museum space, configuring a meeting ground with art for other students is also a practical form of art, to the extent that the students create a new context for the exhibits, and thereby redefine them for their fellow students.

Where Atkinson and Dash deal with the effects of art on the students' social and critical understanding, Richard Hickman focuses on the roles art can play in the context of ‘citizenship education’ in the UK. This is a very specific subject within the English National Curriculum intending to develop ‘social and moral responsibility, community involvement and political literacy.’ (2003: 85) For Hickman the subject ‘art and design’ can play a ‘significant role in educating for citizenship’ if teachers promote ‘an education that is both in art and design and through art and design. [original emphasis]’ (2003: 88) Both types of education are included in this project. At its conclusion 6th and 8th graders will know more about the exhibits and the context in which they were created. They will also have learnt more about their social context, and in how far the messages included in the exhibits apply to their lives.

Of course Hickman's article is concerned with the productive facets of art education. Nevertheless, he also examines the value of ‘focusing on artwork that is concerned with social commentary.’ (Hickman 2003: 85) Interestingly though, he warns against making ‘rather simplistic connections’ in this respectʼ.

‘Art and design lessons have the potential to perpetuate and challenge racial and cultural ʻstereotyping. […] there can also be a more insidious form of mis-education if students are ill-prepared or ill-informed about the art and artefacts of cultures other than their own.’ (2003: 87)

In the context of this exhibition, critical thinking means that students are encouraged to question society as a whole, as well as their own role in society. Hickman calls this ‘education for transgression.’

ʻThere is a certain tension here which is all for the good – resisting the status quo, challenging orthodoxies and rule-breaking are essential attributes of meaningful art and design activities and, one would hope, of a healthy societyʼ. (2003: 89)

He goes on by saying that, even if they do not produce anything new, the students will still learn from the experience. Understanding why and how an artist has created a work of art is a worthwhile achievement in its own right. Consequently, explaining the motives and the process to others must carry the same value. However, it is of vital importance to question how this explanation is going to be carried out. Lesley Burgess and Nicholas Addison warn against ‘dumbing down’ the subject matter, as they call it:

ʻThere is a very real danger that if teachers attempt to ‘dumb down’ the complex theoretical issues and methodologies of critical practice for use by students, the resulting inquiry will be a disjointed and distorted caricature of academic proceduresʼ. (2004: 27)

I endeavoured to avoid this difficulty by theorising only very little about the exhibits, and focusing more on the students’ own personal views and interpretations. This will be described in more detail in the next chapter, which deals with the art exhibition itself.

3. The Art Exhibition Project

3.1. Class description: 6th and 8th graders

The lower level classes which took part in the activities described here were two classes of 6th graders in the school I teach, Școala Gimnazială nr.39 „Nicolae Tonitza”. One class consisted of twenty-six students, and the other of twenty-five. The students in these classes were at lower intermediate level, although there was quite a large spread between the linguistic competences of the individual students. Overall, the level of these classes was approximately at A2 but some students had a B1 level, as described by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). All the classes who took part in the exhibition project worked on the overarching topic of heritage as the theme that was eventually chosen for the exhibition, as many of the exhibits were not painted by contemporary artists.

The class that was principally involved in the activities related to this thesis was a a class of 8th graders. As they started learning English in this school in class 5, this was their fourth year of learning English as a school subject (and year 8 in German). The class was composed of 11 girls and 9 boys, aged from 14 to 15. Even though the learners in this class were liable to display the usual classroom behaviour of students of their age, in a positive as well as a negative sense, the boys were remarkable in their readiness to contribute intelligently to the lessons. The girls, on the other hand, tended to remain quiet, even though their less numerous contributions were usually at least as good, when asked directly. Discounting their contributions to the lessons, the girls were actually able to produce better work than the boys, in general, because they were more motivated and worked harder. Overall, the level of this class can be approximated between A2 and B1, in the CEFR.

Both classes needed opportunities to use English in a context that was more motivating and closer to real life than their everyday lessons. Closer to real life must remain a relative expression in this context, because they were not real life activities. Neither preparing the exhibition for its audience, nor visiting it and listening to the audioguides led the students beyond the school building. The project was conducted almost entirely during their school lessons. Nevertheless, while it is true that the project essentially consisted of classroom activities, it drew on previous experience gathered in museums or art galleries, in some cases while using audioguides. Its purpose was to recreate an environment that resembled a gallery and that broke the daily classroom rhythm, all in the aim of offering opportunities of listening to and speaking English that are at least one step closer to authentic contexts and real life situations,

3.2. Preparing the project with the 6th graders

I intended to gradually introduce the 6th graders to the habit of describing pictures. Therefore, I decided to start this process with Dixit (Jean-Louis Riboura, Libellud, 2008), a card game in which picture description is the main feature. In the original every player has 5 cards depicting a variety of fantastical fairy tale scenes. The players can not see each other's cards. In turn they have to tell a very short story that matches one of their cards. The story can consist of a word, a sound or a sentence. The players who listened then have to select one of their cards that is the best match for the story they have just heard. Then the cards are placed next to each other and turned over, and the players have to vote for the card that was the original, in their opinion. The aim is to tell a story that is abstract enough so that not everyone votes for the right card, but it should also be concrete enough to prevent everyone from voting for the wrong one, because this earns the storyteller the most points.

The rules make the game to be challenging, and the cards are inspiring enough to allow students to narrate interesting stories. They are also well-suited to provide ideas for a follow-up activity where students have to write a longer story based upon one of the cards. The only difficulty consists in adapting the rules, so that even a larger group of twenty-six students can play the game, even if this was not intended by the original rules.

3.2.1. Lesson 1: Getting started

The first time I played the game Dixit with the 8th graders, I analysed the potential of this activity. I prepared this lesson with two 'committed students' in a schoolwork and study lesson during the 30 minutes break at midday) before playing the game in class. The students had to rewrite the rules of the game in English, which they only achieved with limited clarity and success, which is why I had to provide a clearer second version myself.

As expected, the class responded with enthusiasm to the announcement that we were going to play a game, when I announced it at the beginning of the lesson. However, they were less enthusiastic when they realised that the rules were going to be explained in English by the 'committed students'. At this point it transpired that neither the 'committed students', nor the lesson as a whole was prepared well enough. For example, despite their preparation, the two students started straight off by explaining the rules, without mentioning what the game was all about, or what the overall aim was.

After having analysed the lesson I identified a need to modify certain methodological parameters before repeating the activity with the other class of 6th graders. In the first class of 6th graders we had played the game in a plenary. Consequently, the learners were rather agitated, firstly because the rules were slightly more intricate than they had expected. More importantly, however, is that each student did not have enough to do, as only a small proportion of students could tell a story, while all the others had to listen and wait for their turn. Moreover, the lesson was not varied enough, since the game consisted of only two phases. In the first part of the lesson the rules were explained and the game was prepared. The second part of the lesson was filled with only five rounds, that is five stories being told. Nevertheless, I was convinced that playing this game in class is a useful activity, where learners can use the language: provided the lesson is planned in a way that uses the time invested in an effective way.

3.2.2. Lesson 2: An improved version of the game

This is why I designed the lesson differently for the second time we played the game. Instead of playing the game as a large group in a plenary, I divided the learners up into five groups of four members each, with one committed student in every group. I prepared a handout for the stories and the score. In addition to this, the lesson had more phases than the prototype. First we prepared the game in a plenary, explained the rules, and discussed what stories one could tell about an example card. The next phase was the game itself, where every group played fifteen or sixteen round, so that every group member told at least three to four stories. I asked the groups to write down the story that was told in every round, so that they used more skills. They had to tell stories or listen to them, as well as write them down and read them again during the voting stage of every round, in order to decide which card to vote for.

This has the advantage that student talking time is multiplied, because five stories are being told at the same time by different learners. Moreover, it helped me check whether they told their stories in English. I also asked them to return the handout to me at the end of the lesson in order to evaluate the level of English they used in their stories. At the end of the game every group determined who the winner was by adding up the points. They also decided who told the best stories. In the final stage of the lesson students had to choose a card from the ones they currently had on their desk, and write a story about it. All in all, this lesson was much more successful than the previous one. The students were more engaged with the topic at hand, there was a greater variety of activities in the lesson, and the students were more productive. They were now ready for the next stage of the project.

3.2.3. Lesson 3: Picture description

The aim of this lesson was to engage 8th graders with works of art, paintings of different styles and periods, or photographs. The variety of artists treated in this lesson included, for example, Picasso's Guernica, a photograph of a Haitian girl in a refugee camp, paintings by Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Banksy and Hockney. The aim of this task was to record and discuss the students' reactions, as well as developing their description and analysis skills.

After a general introductory discussion about art and galleries, the first stage of the lesson consisted in gathering their first impressions. In pairs, the students were asked to engage with a work of art, printed out in colour on an A4 sheet. Their instructions at this stage were to take a good look at what they could see what was in the picture or painting: a crowd scene in a café, for example, or a portrait of an individual. I asked them to think about it, and share their thoughts with their neighbour, in English. Naturally, the level of difficulty for this initial task was still very basic. While planning this lesson I took into consideration the fact that I was working with 8th graders for most of whom art was still a relatively unfamiliar and, above all, uninteresting subject. This is also why I expected relatively basic answers from one part of the group, even though I anticipated more elaborate and detailed reactions from the committed students.

I let three pairs present their picture to the class. My expectations were not disappointed. The sentences the students used in their presentations ranged from 'There is a woman / man. She / he looks happy / sad.' to longer and more complex sentences. I used the presentations to make the students aware of the grammar areas needed in tasks such as these, for example 'there is / there are'. We also made a list of useful lexical items.

As in every lesson, we wrote it on the right hand side of the blackboard, and students were expected to copy it into their notebooks. They were expressions that the students needed during the presentations in order to communicate the contents to the class. These included lexical chunks like the following: 'on the left, in the background, in the top right corner'. Naturally, the students who were presenting asked me to provide those they needed for their painting, but I made a point of obtaining more, in order to write down a coherent and systematic list. I dedicated lesson time to this in view of their visit of the exhibition of the other class, where they were going to be exposed to this vocabulary. In this way I intended to give the lower level classes a head start: the less energy they needed to invest to understand the text of the audioguides, the more they could focus on the content and the message. Usually, this alone is difficult enough for 8th graders who have only studied English for four years.

In the second stage of the lesson, then, I increased the degree of difficulty. I set them essentially the same task, only this time in writing. I also redistributed the material, so that every student had a painting of photograph, one they had not seen or discussed in this lesson. The instructions were to observe, describe and analyse what they saw. I wrote the following instructions on the blackboard:

Picture description:

• What can you see? Who? Where? What? When? How is it painted?

• What is your reaction to this? Atmosphere, emotions…

• What is your opinion, interpretation? Compare it to something else, for example.

They had a time limit of 30 minutes and were allowed to use an online dictionary, which more than half of the class usually does. As expected, the majority was able to finish in time, with results

One student, who had to face Guernica by Pablo Picasso, wrote:

ʻI can see some animals and people who are in a room and suffer. […] The whole scene looks like a war. […] The picture was painted in black-and-white. The emotions at the picture were really bad. Everyone cryed, fighting for his life. I can see the pain on their faces or the sorrow when someone died. It makes me sad when I look at this painting. It is a horrible war scene and anyone took consideration at the otherʼ. RC

In terms of task achievement this student followed the instructions closely. She started off by reiterating the first question from the blackboard in her first sentence, and described what was there in the painting on a subject matter level. The last sentences of her text relate to the second and third point in the instructions, not at a great length though, probably due to time constraints. Here she tries to interpret what she sees, voices her emotional reaction to it and provides her opinion.

I asked a committed student in the 6th grade to read the descriptions and to write down her observations about them. Since they could not be present in the 8th graders’ lesson I intended to delegate the task of drawing conclusions about the 8th graders linguistic and analytical abilities to the older students. The aim was, once again, to involve the 6th graders in one step of the project. This was intended to enhance the role they played in the development of the exhibition, and to give them a sense of achievement. The impression of having control over the project went hand in hand with a sense of ownership, which entailed that at least some of the 6th graders felt responsible for the success of 'their' exhibition.

In retrospect, I can identify this as an important factor for the motivation of the 6th graders to work hard on this exhibition. The following extract is taken from her analysis of the 8th graders' texts:

ʻWe have to keep it visual and we have to speak in a simple english. [sic] In their texts they mostly wrote short sentences and their vocabulary is good, but we shouldn't use too complicated words in the audio-guides. A vocabulary list would be great for them to understand everything. Sometimes they didn't wrote the right words to describe things, they used unappropriate words. […] Some of them described the pictures very well and even expressed themselves about the painting. In general they did a lot of grammar mistakesʼ. LA

All in all, I tend to agree with this summary. The language used by the 8th graders was situated well within the range one can expect at their level. It mainly featured short sentences, a limited vocabulary, as well as mistakes that did not, however, cause too much of a strain on the reader. It has to be admitted that some of the 8th graders’ descriptions were rather uninspired, even if almost all the students met the requirements of the task. Nevertheless, there were others, as already mentioned, who produced very good responses.

This lesson was significant in the larger context of the project, because it allowed me to evaluate the 8th graders’ interests in art and linguistic capabilities of describing and discussing it to a higher degree than by means of a survey. Another important aim that was reached was to encourage them to engage with art and to practise using the lexical chunks, or the words and expressions, associated with art and paintings.

3.3. The art exhibition

3.3.1. Lesson 1: First steps

In the first lesson in which one of the classes of 6th graders worked on this project I started off by introducing it to the students. I explained what the goal was, the exhibition and the audioguides. I also informed them on why we were doing this in class, that they would learn from it, all the while teaching the 8th graders, who would thus also benefit from their work. I added that their opinions would play a significant role in the implementation of the project. There were several occasions where their decision was called for on possible alternative ways of realising the project. I planned to involve them in the decision making process to a higher degree because it would require that they would become more invested in it, and, by consequence, more motivated to contribute to its success.

We started off the first main part of the lesson by discussing what art actually is, how it could possibly be defined. We examined what role and what significance it has in society, today as well as historically. I encouraged the students to draw on their knowledge gained in other subjects, in their optional courses in school or outside of school. It turned out that most learners took part in the discussion with surprising maturity. This realisation supported my conviction that art is a suitable subject to focus on at their level. Amongst other uses, it lends itself as a prompt for conversations, tasks or debates concerned with aesthetics, society or politics. Examples from these topic areas inevitably turned up in our initial, and rather fundamental, discussion.

Introducing art as a subject in English class was facilitated by the fact that the 'Art' teacher of the 6th graders had completed a very interesting project with the class. They had already taken part in a field trip to the Art Museum in Constanța, where they had worked with some examples of paintings. More precisely, every student had researched information about a specific painting, which they then had to present to their classmates. This meant that they had already covered some theoretical and practical questions related to discussing, analysing and presenting art. Even though the class had done this in a different language, I counted it as a bonus for the audioguide project.

For this particular lesson I had selected 35 famous paintings by artists such as Gainsborough, Monet, Goya, Turner or Da Vinci as well as about ten photographs of various examples of recent street art. I divided up the class into 7 pairs and distributed the copies among them. I then instructed them to assess the works of art in order to determine which of them were to be put on a shortlist, from which we would later choose those shown in their exhibition.

The result was that a large majority of the class was in favour of including many examples of street art. They argued that this contemporary form of art was certainly the most interesting to them, just as it probably was the most interesting one for their audience. Other painters chosen were Jacques Louis David and J. M. W. Turner, or Surrealist painters like Magritte. Obviously, the copies I handed out to them could not represent in any way a comprehensive overview of art history. They were merely intended as a starting point for the process of determining which styles and artists we were going to include. Therefore I expected them to provide suggestions about which other examples of art or artists we could include.

3.3.2. Lesson 2: Developing the concept

In the second lesson, a week's time after the first, we began by revising what we had agreed upon in the previous lesson. I then announced what was next on the to-do-list, namely agreeing on a concept for the exhibition. This was to be the scaffolding in which the students were going to work during the preparation phase. Other aims for this lesson were completing a preliminary list of works of art and developing the organisation of the exhibition itself.

This lesson proved that the class was very motivated to work on this project. One of the reasons for this certainly lay in the fact that it gave them the opportunity to teach a lower level class to some degree.

Once again the initial part of the lesson took the form of a discussion, this time about the concept and the organisation of the exhibition, in other words, the general direction in which the planning was going to progress. The conclusion we arrived at was that instead of a random jumble of works of art though the centuries the majority of the class was in favour of choosing an overall theme.

In the following stage of the lesson I had decided to let the class work in pairs again. This time, however, I intended to differentiate the learning material, therefore I had prepared different types of tasks for every pair. As a teacher, using differentiated learning has the advantage that the needs of students in mixed-ability groups can be met. Jeremy Harmer describes these as 'groups where different individuals are at different levels and have different abilities.' (2007: 176-177) However, apart from being at different language learning levels, individuals in a group also have different preferences for processing of language, as Terry Mahony points out: the visual, the auditory and the kinaesthetic. (2007: 43-45) Teachers need to be aware of these important sets of variable factors when designing lessons and sequences. With this in mind, I had planned for one group of students to work out a concept, another to start a vocabulary list. I provided a third part of the class with a colour copy of a painting or graffiti we had chosen in the previous lesson.

There was an interesting moment where two students (RM and MD) discussed in English how and why Surrealism could fit in with the overall concept of ‘social criticism’. Overhearing students busily discussing the task at hand in the target language during groupwork is always rewarding for teachers. It meant I had given them a task that had caught their attention, and they were trying to perform well. RM, who turned out to be very knowledgeable about Surrealism, concluded the lesson with a presentation of a number of works of art of that style that might fit the title of the exhibition.

3.3.3. Lesson 3: Describing and interpreting pictures

In this lesson we first discussed in a plenary the concept for the future exhibition that two students had prepared in the previous lesson. These plenary discussions were important in the early stages of the project, to maintain the students' involvement in the planning process, and thereby encouraging their motivation. We discussed the role of art in society in general, but also the important part that art can play in raising awareness about topical issues in society, for example.

Society and art, but also arts education, are very closely intertwined, as Anne Bamford asserts. In her opinion, the

‘social, political and historical context’ of art and arts education ʻis germane to an understanding of arts education. […] the arts exists as constructions of the collective beliefs of society and the principles upon which that context is formulated directly impact on the nature of artʼ. (Bamford, 2006: 29)

It is clear that art lives and breathes its context, and it can not live without it. The class also agreed that it can be a powerful weapon, if used appropriately, because it has very effective subversive qualities.

Artists have a very positive image in most societies, at least those who attempt to improve the society, or the context in which they work, rather than shutting themselves off from it by living in an ivory tower. Most people are more ready to pity artists who are imprisoned by repressive governments because of their art, as opposed to violent protesters who throw stones at policemen. After all, the artists’ protest is peaceful and creative, as well as being pleasing to the eye or ear, in many cases.

However, art that is critical of society is not only considered as problematic and reprehensible by undemocratic governments in far-away countries. Even nations that we know as 'Western' democracies are capable of repressive action on occasion. William Cleveland points this out in the introduction to his book entitled Art and Upheaval.

ʻMany of those in the audience that day were surprised to learn that none of these scenes had been made up. Their surprise turned to shock when they learned that one of the more extreme scenarios from my list was home-grown. As I recounted the story of the 1973 burning of the Watts Writers Workshop by a man working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I could sense a subtle shift among my listeners. They had assumed that my talk about ‘artists on the world’s frontlines’ was going to be about other places, dangerous places, far removed from their own experienceʼ. (2008: 1-2)

All of these crucial aspects of the role of art in society were examined in the discussion with the 6th graders. This discussion was the initial step in refining the overall concept for the exhibition. At its final point the class assembled a preliminary list of exhibits divided into four different categories and fourteen works of art that they were going to write audioguides about.

In the second part of the lesson I asked them to choose a painting that they did not know very much, or nothing about and to engage with it. They were asked to adhere to the following instructions

• Describe your work of art in detail: everything you can see.

• Describe your reaction, what you associate with what you observe.

• Comment, analyse, criticise and interpret.

• Write down the words and expressions you had to look up.

These instructions are based on Michael Buchanan’s ‘knowing, decoding and exploring’ model, described by Michele Tallack, even if I altered this model slightly, to fit into the lesson sequence plan:

ʻHis model provides stages through which students pass […]. It starts with ‘knowing’ – the giving of information derived from known facts, followed by ‘decoding’ – description elicited from students based on close observation, description and analysis. This, he argues, will lead on to ‘exploring’ – interpretation, involving the ‘use of deduction and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.’ (Tallack, 2004: 111)

I changed the model provided by Buchanan somewhat, because I wanted the students to describe and analyse the paintings without having done any research previously that would influence their interpretation.

At this stage some students were confused about the purpose of the task. For different reasons, either because they had not understood or listened to the instructions well enough, they did not see the point in writing two texts about the same painting, as they put it. I had to repeat that their spontaneous reactions to unknown paintings were valuable too, especially for those who would write the audioguide about the exhibit. I explained to the whole class that everyone of them would eventually, after researching detailed information, have to write a guide for an audience that would probably see the work of art for the first time, without this background knowledge. The difficulty would then be to put themselves into the audience's position. Their classmates' written observations would help them in this. After I had convinced them, they attempted to complete the task readily enough.

It was extremely interesting to read these first impressions. Some students showed that they are very keen observers, others produced surprising insights and interpretations of what they saw, without even knowing much about the artist or the style of the painting. Almost all of them engaged with their work of art and thought intelligently and critically about what they saw. It was a first encounter with the paintings, unburdened by any knowledge, or traditional academic opinions about them. Therefore, it is safe to say that this is a useful exercise in a project or a lesson sequence such as this.

3.3.4. Lesson 4: How to write an audioguide

In this lesson I talked to the class about how one can create audioguides in English, but also in many other languages, for museums and cultural attractions around the world. In my presentation I showed the class a video on Youtube explaining how the process of creating an audioguide works (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yBh02gzytg ) and so they discovered that there is a whole website and an app that can help, even though in the end we opted for recording the scripts on their phones, since this is obviously at hand. The presentation proved to be highly informative and deeply motivating for the students, who benefited enormously from it. I also gave a short overview of the different people who are involved in the making of an audioguide, such as the writer, the voice actors and the producer, amongst others.

The main part of the presentation, however, was a tutorial in how to make a good audioguide. With the use of examples I showed the students the options they were facing at the beginning of the writing process. One student wrote in her report: 'First of all, we have to define the story and the tone of the exhibition. Should it be funny, with jokes, or should we keep it more serious? Should it be objectiv [sic] or subjectiv?' These were the decisions they had to make as a class before starting the writing process.

I also gave them a list of clear aims they should try to follow when designing the exhibition and the individual guides. After her presentation, and some questions that the students still had, I asked them to write a report about it based on the notes they had taken during the lesson. The same student remembered it in this way: ʻWhat often is good in audio-guides, (when you listen to someone) is to put emotion in it. Then you need a story which will create a connection between the different paintings. We have to tell a story! Our exhibition and audio-guides also have to contain a structure and it has to be clearʼ.

I pointed out that story and structure are all-important, because most students included this information in their reports. It was also noticeable in the exhibition that they put this good piece of advice into practice. The last part of this student's report is concerned with some more technical aspects: ʻA very important thing for the visitor is that there is an introduction. We have to give them instructions at the beginning. There are also some things we have to be careful at for the audio-guide itself: it has to be clearly spoken, it shouldn't be too long (max. 2 min. / painting), we have to keep it visual. Music is also very nice to put into the audio-guidesʼ.

The class agreed that the visitors would receive the necessary instructions verbally, rather than in the form of an introductory recorded audioguide track. They argued that this would make the beginning of the visit more personal and welcoming if one of them greeted the 6th graders personally. Most of the class also remembered the prompt to 'keep it visual' when they wrote their texts. I had stressed how important it is to not merely explain a painting, but also to show the visitor what is meant by pointing out where the relevant information can be seen in the painting. Many of the 8th graders managed to do this in their audioguides.

The final part of the lesson was taken up with putting together a questionnaire that was intended for the 6th graders. I asked the 8th graders to produce it in the aim of finding out how much the younger students knew and cared about art. I could easily have written the questionnaire myself, however I intended to have the 8th graders write and evaluate it themselves. In this way they were forced to already deal with the capacities and interests of their audience before they were in the exhibition. I expected a positive influence on the writing process of the audioguides from this task.

3.3.5. Lesson 5: Writing a script

After both 6th graders classes had completed the questionnaires the 4ème evaluated them in class. They had been asked to answer questions about their perspective on art in general: 'What is your definition of art?', 'Why do people make art?', or 'What does art mean to you?'. Other questions concerned their personal preferences: 'What's your favourite style of art? Favourite painting? Favourite artist? What do you like about her or him?', and 'What would you like to learn about art?'. The third part of the questionnaire focused on the younger students' experience with exhibitions and audioguides. The last part consisted of questions about smartphones and the students' habits in using them. I was not entirely satisfied with some of the questions, but decided to only change some of them, as they had been provided by the 8th graders. Overall, the 6th graders' answers were interesting. The analysis of the questionnaires created by the 8th graders showed that many of their prospective audience owned a smartphone that was able to play audio files. It also revealed that the younger students were mainly interested in street art. These findings were discussed in class and had an influence on the overall design of the exhibition.

The class of 8th graders was now ready to start the writing process. The first step for them was to research information about the painting. To save classroom time I had asked them to prepare this for the following lesson. Every student received a colour copy of the painting, as well as the first reactions written by their classmates in a previous lesson.

ʻAudioguide:

Research information about the artist, the style, and the subject matter. Find out when it was painted, and where.

Write a first version of a text for an audioguide, keep it visual, try not to include too many factsʼ.

I added more detailed instructions and explanations in reply to questions that were raised by the class. I gave them to understand that in order to be able to understand why a painting was created they needed to research the context. They would need to gather information about the artists' philosophies, any messages included in the paintings, and interpretations of the works of art. I also asked them to look up the artists' significance at the time the exhibit was created, as well as their significance today: does this painting still have a message for us today? Furthermore, I reminded them of the 6th graders indications in the questionnaire about what they were interested in, or wanted to know about paintings.

3.3.6. Lesson 6: Finishing the scripts

I planned this lesson as an opportunity for the class to put the final touches to their scripts. At the beginning they took the opportunity to ask more detailed questions about vocabulary and certain expressions. At that moment I had decided not to focus primarily on pronunciation, because the first priority was to structure the scripts well and to smooth out obscure or difficult passages that are inevitable in written work at this level of language learning.

After this they were ready to present their texts to the whole class for the first time. I asked them to read them out loud, with the help of whoever they had chosen as second voice actor, if they needed one. The reactions to each other's texts were very positive and supportive, overall. Most writers received feedback on how to improve their texts, whether they should change or omit something from their scripts.

3.3.7. Lessons 7-9: Recording the audioguides

The recording process turned out to be a very interesting experience, for the students as well as for me. The students were able to find out at first hand that recording an audioguide involves more than simply reading a text off a page. Most students needed much more time than they, or I myself, had anticipated. The possibilities of using editing tools after recording are nearly limitless, as contemporary pop music shows. We had decided, however, to edit as little as possible after recording for a pedagogical reason. Had they known that any inadequacies of their spoken text were going to be removed or touched up, some would most probably have made less of an effort, however motivated they might have been.

I quickly noticed a characteristic that all the 8th graders voice actors had in common. Almost all of them tended to read their texts much too quickly. Not only would the 6th graders have failed to understand them, their pace was too quick even for an audience with English as a first language. Most were able to slow down their speed on being told, but some found it very difficult. One reason was certainly that they already knew their scripts very well, another might have been that they wanted to put the experience recording behind them as quickly as possible.

In preparation for the exhibition one of the committed students designed a flyer with the exhibits that awaited the audience, and a short explanatory text.

3.3.8. Lesson 10: Setting up the exhibition

The class used this very last lesson before the exhibition for their final preparations. They put up the exhibits, arranged into the four groups, or parts that constituted the exhibition. They also made cards indicating the title and the artist's name. The photographs of the graffiti pieces were put up on the blackboard, which was then decorated with chalk drawings. Then the room was ready for the demonstration in its intended setting.

The student who had designed the flyer, in his free time, showed it to the rest of the class. His classmates were impressed, both by his hard work and the very presentable result. This is an excellent example of one way in which technology can be made use of in a school context. Andy Ash argues, somewhat drastically, that this is an absolute necessity in art education:

‘art teachers need to bite the bullet of ICT [information and communications technology] or prepare for their subject to die.’ (2004: 100)

The conclusion he draws is certainly also applicable to other subjects.

Another student had enhanced the bare spoken monologues and dialogues with music. He had carefully selected it to highlight the mood of the painting and the text. As a result, most of the audioguides have even more of an impact on the listener, even if, admittedly, the volume is not ideally balanced in those instances where the voice actors spoke relatively softly.

3.4. The audioguides

The audioguides were of good quality, generally speaking. They were even better, in fact, than I had hoped for. Some students, however, managed to produce excellent texts. They wrote in a simple, yet interesting way, kept it visual, and managed to catch and hold their audience's interest. Others were less captivating, some not very well-structured, or read in a too monotonous voice. Three students chose to lend their voice to one of the protagonists of their painting and have them address the audience directly. These were the audioguides about Woman with a Cat, by Pierre Bonnard, where the woman painted presents the painting and her relationship with her cat, and Summer, by Frank Weston Benson, where the speaker is one of the sisters. A third guide with this feature was written about Henri Matisse's portrait The Romanian Blouse. We chose the last version of the painting, which can be found at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and was painted in 1940.

One of the students suggested we used Jacques-Louis David's Napoleon Crossing the Alps.

In this painting one of the soldiers who are pulling an artillery piece up the slope sees the painting and, as a veteran, remembers the crossing of the Alps differently than David painted it.

ʻ[Napoleon] wasn't riding on a great horse with such an elegant golden hat and brand new uniform and shiny boots. But instead on a silly little donkey with an old grey coat. It was freezing cold, there was mud then snow and rocks and wind when he crossed the Alps, together with men like me, to fight the Austrians in Italy. This painting by Jacques-Louis David, in the neoclassical style, is pure propaganda, because David was a supporter of Napoleon Bonaparte. He didn't respect the reality at all. The only purpose was to manipulate the people by showing Napoleon as a hero and rescuer of France.ʼ […]

This rather controversial commentary on a heroic portrait earns the painting its place in the exhibition about 'Social Criticism', since he argues, quite correctly, that the painting was intended and used for propaganda purposes. This extract also shows that this student played with the speaker's role. The speaker does not stay in character, as one would say about a character in a play. Instead he is transformed into a museum guide in the second half of the text, where he comments on the 'neoclassical style' of the painting. In the last sentence of the audioguide the veteran soldier disappears completely, when the speaker adds his own opinion and asks the audience a direct question: 'In my opinion, this painting is a bit exaggerated, even for propaganda, don't you think?' This final twist is also a feature that it has in common with the others who chose a character from the painting as a speaker.

Other students chose the less imaginative, but not less effective, way of creating a dialogue between two people who are looking at the same painting as the museum visitors. The former alternative makes the painting come alive for the observer, which makes it more appealing, more interesting. The second possibility for the writer is to take the point of view of the audience, who is standing outside of the painting. One student wrote a particularly good script for her audioguide about the billboard on a clothing advertisement. She used this type of outside perspective, as one could call it. It is certainly worth a closer analysis.

At the top of the page she provided some few facts about the exhibit. As previously, I reproduce the original text, in the student's words and including typographical errors and grammatical mistakes.

Background information:

This work of art was an advertisment for H&M clothing. It may seem ordinary, but these kind of pictures fill the streets we walk on and they send a clear message of what certain social standards should be followed by purchasing already made products which are supposed to make us look like the people in the pictures.It is our perception that makes the difference.He pasted a toolbar of Photoshop on some ordinary billboards of H&M in Hamburg, Germany. By the post of the blogger: "I'm not Alex Bogusky" on Tumblr, the picture became famous and passed around the world.

Then she adds her 'Background story: Two girls are walking on the streets of Hamburg. Then they see the poster. How do they react? What do they think about it?' She invented a conversation, and wrote it like a playwright would, with stage instructions as well as indicating what can be heard in the background.

Sounds: No music. The noises of an urban city in the background.

Dialogue:

Person 1 (calling): – Hey, come here and take a look at this pretty bikini. It would look great on me. Wouldn't it?'

Person 2: – Yeah, it's perfect for you and just look at the price. It's so cheap!

H&M Billboard / Daniel Soares. Hamburg, 2012

The beginning, the first impression, of an audioguide is extremely important, of course, as it needs to get the audience's attention. This student chose a setting in everyday life, two people walking down a busy street. It fits her subject, on one hand, as billboards are common features in public places. Yet it is also well adapted to her audience, on the other hand, because scenes like these occur very frequently in the 6th graders' everyday lives. She also kept my advice in mind to always refer to the visual elements of the exhibit, to point them out to the onlooker. This is what sI meant when I told the class to 'keep it visual': to take the audience by the hand, metaphorically speaking, and lead their eyes around the painting, or the photograph.

It certainly helps if, like in this example, the audioguide focuses first on the most obvious elements of the exhibit. The two girls who are walking 'on the streets of Hamburg' see the billboard first, then the woman who is wearing a bikini, which is being advertised. She mentions only then is the graffiti artist's small addendum to the advertisement on the left:

Person 1: – But wait! What's this box on the left?!

Person 2: – It looks like a Photoshop toolbar!

Person 1 (worrying): – It has to be a mistake!

Person 2: – Maybe! But it could also be on purpose.

Person 1: – Why would someone do that?

Person 2: – To make the people think about what's real on this billboard!

Person 1 (confused): – I don't understand what you mean.

Person 2: – Well, just take a closer look at this poster. Look at the model in the middle. What do you think when you see her?

The conversation works so well as an audioguide, because it seems very realistic, close to real life, but it also takes up the questions that the museum visitors are asking themselves while standing in front of the exhibit: 'What's this box?', 'It has to be a mistake!', or ' Why would someone do that?'. Step by step these questions are answered. Step by step Person 1 leads Person 2 into her interpretation of the exhibit. By asking the right questions, she manages to get her friend to think more about it, and she gets the right answers. Since the audience is listening to this, they are cast in the role of Person 2, whereas the writer's role is that of Person 1: she explains, illustrates and convinces her audience.

The dialogue continues, with Person 1 still leading the way and defining the interpretation:

Person 1 (unsure): – Ehm, she's beautiful?!

Person 2: – Exactly! Her skin is perfectly tanned. She's not too fat and not too thin. She has a well-trained body. Her makeup is immaculate and her hair is perfectly arranged. All in all, she is a stunning woman. Is this realistic though?

Person 1: – No! But-

Person 2 (interrupting): – And look at the background. The model is sitting in perfectly clear, turquoise water and the sky is completely blue, without even the smallest cloud.

Here, after having established some facts about the central element in the picture, Person 2 points out the less obvious, the background. She encourages her friend to scrutinise it in detail and draws conclusions about it.

After the discussion and analysis of the surface of the advertisement, metaphorically speaking, follows an all-encompassing socially critical examination of its cultural significance.

Person 1: – Yes this can't possibly be completely real, but that's normal. Every advertisement is reworked. It has to look pretty, so that the people will buy it.

Person 2: – Precisely! And this poster wants to remind the people to pay attention, to think about what's real and what's just a illusion!

Person 1: – But what's so bad about it? It's just a Bikini!

Person 2: – The Bikini isn't the bad thing! The alarming thing is that people let themselves be manipulated that easily. Because when they see this beautiful, perfect model in this Bikini, they think they would also look that beautiful in this Bikini and they want to buy it. That's marketing! Manipulating people's minds and we don't even notice it! Especially the fashion and beauty industry manipulate us.

Person 1: – Ohh maybe you could be right!

Person 2: – Of course I'm right. I'm happy that there are some artists who remind us of this sometimes.

The script closes with the writer conveying her personal opinion to the listener in the last sentence. Overall, the audioguide perfectly fits the theme of social criticism that the class had developed for the exhibition.

The third and last audioguide I will analyse here was written for William Turner's famous The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, painted in 1838.

J. M. W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up.

This guide is also designed as a dialogue between two people discussing the painting. Here, however, as opposed to the previous example, the student granted both characters the right to interpret the scene. This means that both voices carry the same weight when it comes to giving meaning to what the audience is seeing on the canvas, even though the two interpretations are diametrically opposed. The only difference between the speakers is that Person 1 remembers it better than Person 2 does:

Person 1: I know this! It was painted by William Turner, an English romantic artist.

Person 2: Oh yeah. I remember. We saw it in class, right?

Person 1: Mm- hm. An epic scene in a spectacular sunset!

Person 2: Wasn't there a story about the ship or something like that?

Person 1: Just let your imagination take you back in 1805 and feel the warmth of the setting sun… and I will tell you the story.

The writer's decision to choose two students as characters has an obvious advantage. It allowed her to include the less interesting information about the painting that would sound artificial in any everyday conversation. In a dialogue between two students who come across something they have seen in class, on the other hand, it appears natural to include what they remember their teacher telling them. This twist is necessary, because it is obvious that all the information that the audience should receive needs to be included in the audioguide. Most audioguides usually only offer the most important facts, only a bare minimum, because listeners are unable to process an overload of facts. This is why the students had to find a solution for the difficult problem of how to include a mention of the paintings' style in their scripts without being too artificial.

After this short introductory exchange, Person 1 then proceeds to tell her classmate the historical background to the scene. The first part of the recording ends with Person 1's personal opinion:

Person 1: The big white sailing ship you see on the left is the glorious "Fighting Temeraire", a war ship that played an important role in the victory of Nelson in the battle of Trafalgar. It is towed by a black steam boat of the early nineteenth century on her way to be broken up…

Person 2 (finishing the sentence of the first person): … because her time has finally come to an end.

Person 1: Exactly! I like this painting because of the calm and almost sad but still nostalgic atmosphere.

Person 1's interpretation follows the orthodox consensus that the dominant emotion in the painting is nostalgia. The old ship symbolises the past, she 'is already a ghostly shape, fading away', as the National Gallery guide puts it. The much more prosaic, and more real, 'solid form of the squat little steam tug that pulls her along to her fate', on the other hand, stands for the present and the future. (nationalgallery.org.uk / The Fighting Temeraire)

In the second part, Person 2 offers her view of the same painting. The writer obviously wants to show and teach the 6th graders that same subject matter can be interpreted in very different ways by different people. Person 2 quite literally sees the scene in a different light:

Person 2: You have a very melancholic vision of the painting, you know, talking about the setting sun and the old ship which will be destroyed.

Person 1: Mm-hm.

Person 2: But if you look at it again, you will discover a completely different point of view. Imagine the sun isn't setting but rising. It's a new age. We are now in the early nineteenth century and we can clearly see progress in the painting. The black steam boat is a symbol for the industrial revolution. It's strong and fast.

As the shift of perspective occurs at this point, from Person 1 to Person 2's interpretation, the music that they chose reflects this shift. From slow and muted, its pace and tone gradually increase and lighten up when Person 2 is voicing her thoughts about the optimism that she sees in the painting, starting from the sunrise symbolising the 'new age'.

Person 1: You're right. I think both interpretations are great. Yours is more optimistic, though.

Person 2: In any case, it's one of William Turner's best works of art.

One cannot but notice that there is very much agreement between the two speakers. The risk inherent in shutting out divergence of opinion or even conflict between two voices is that is less interesting for many people. Using disagreement, often couched in humour, as a way to convey information about an exhibit can and does work. There are examples of very amusing audioguides, where the characters are bickering, and even making fun of the topic at hand. This is a great way to raise interest and convey information about an exhibit, especially for younger visitors.

There is, however, a serious historical inaccuracy in the text, that escaped the writer's attention. The ship was broken up in the same year Turner painted the scene, in 1838, not in 1805, as the student claims in her audioguide. 1805, after all, was the year of Trafalgar, where the Téméraire fought her most important battle.

A further inaccuracy lies in the interpretation of Person 2. It is of less consequence, however, as it is counterbalanced by a geographical inaccuracy that Turner, presumably knowingly, included in his painting. If the scene were set at sunrise, the position of the moon, to the left of the Temeraire's main topgallant mast, would be much too far north. It follows that Turner painted a sunset, which is why, logically, Person 2's interpretation is impossible. However, as the National Gallery's description reads, in the painting 'The 'Temeraire' is shown travelling east, away from the sunset, even though Rotherhithe is west of Sheerness, […].' (nationalgallery.org.uk / The Fighting Temeraire)

It is clear that being overly pedantic in a case such as this would be rather counterproductive. Turner himself, after all, was quite free in the use of his artistic licence. For this reason, I let the students proceed in recording their audioguide, despite its drawbacks and inconsistencies of interpretation. The interesting structure the writer chose to give it, and the very enthusiastic way in which she developed her creative idea were justification enough for me not to interfere excessively in the writing process.

It is undeniable that none of the audioguides produced by the 8th graders are immaculate. Obviously there are still some mistakes in the second example. There are still some quite basic grammar mistakes left, such as 'a illusion', comma mistakes or inaccurate expressions. One could also argue that the final sentence is a touch too didactic on the part of Person 2. It is also true that the voice actors committed a certain number of pronunciation mistakes when acting out the scripts in the studio. Nevertheless, it must be remembered that the writers are 8th graders who accomplished this in their fourth year of learning English. In this perspective, their achievement is remarkable.

The question remains whether it would have been useful to have the 8th graders write more drafts, give feedback on each one and practise the spoken texts in even more detail. There is a delicate balance to be kept between being too permissive and being too perfectionist. In this particular case it meant that I had to decide between leaving the students to their own devices in the writing of their scripts and focusing heavily on multiple drafts. Finally, I considered two written drafts to be sufficient for the often necessary improvements to structure and style. When the script was finished I asked students to present them to the class. This was a good occasion where I was able to detect cases of incorrect pronunciation. In addition to this, the students themselves also proofread each other's texts. If any major mistakes had remained, they would have been rectified during the recording session. Any mistakes or errors that remained I judged to be minor enough to not detract from the value of the final product.

3.5. The museum experience

The exhibition with the audioguides were ready for their audience. Two 6th graders classes classes visited the exhibition separately on the same day, during their English lesson. When they were in the classroom they were welcomed by two of the 8th graders. They explained to them everything they needed to know: how and why the exhibition came into being, what the title meant and how the concept had an influence on the content, on the exhibits that they were about to see. They then proceeded to the more technical details about where it was best to star. The 6th graders were also issued with the handouts we had prepared for them, the questionnaire and the glossary.

At this point, however, we already knew that we would encounter a difficulty. Making the audioguide files available that everyone can access via the internet requires the visitors to have access to the internet on a level allowing them to download the files. When we had asked the 6th graders in the first questionnaire about whether they owned smartphones with internet access, a majority answered yes. Nevertheless, as it turned out, only about a quarter of them also had a contract that allowed them unlimited access to the internet. In addition to this, the reception was far from ideal inside the classroom.

It is necessary to dwell on these technical observations for some length, regrettably, since in order to listen to audioguides, in whatever shape or form, the visitors need technical equipment. We were prepared for this contingency and had developed a Plan B, as well as a Plan C. I asked those students who were well- equipped to start the museum visit with their smartphone, and to take along one of the students who did not own one by sharing the headphones with them. Meanwhile the two 8th graders who were present at the beginning of this lesson attempted to set up their own wireless network, for those who did not have free internet access. Unfortunately, they did not succeed due to the different makes of mobile devices that the 6th graders were using.

This is why, finally, we resorted to plan C, which meant accessing the audio files via the classroom PC and playing the audioguides via the stereo system. This had obvious disadvantages. Roughly half the class, about ten to twelve students, had proceeded around the exhibition as a group. They all had to look at the exhibit referred to in the chapter of the audioguide that was being played. Apart from this it also inconvenienced those students who had already begun their tour, and were listening to a different track. Despite these drawbacks it was still possible for the 6th graders to complete the museum visit successfully, which they all did.

Keeping this in mind, there is also the possibility to opt for a Plan D when repeating this project. All smartphones are delivered with cables allowing their users to connect them to a PC or a charger, usually via a USB socket. One should ask the visiting students to bring these to school a few days before the exhibition to copy the audio files from a PC to their phone. In this way the visitors would not be forced to access the internet during the lesson, and one could be certain that every student already has the files before the exhibition.

I had considered this option, or Plan D, but finally decided against it. Not distributing the audio files before the exhibition allowed me to maintain the suspense for the 6th graders until the day itself. I regarded this as an important advantage. Students who have the opportunity to listen to the audioguides beforehand might be bored during the exhibition. In case they do not appreciate what they listen to, for example simply because they are lacking the context provided by the exhibition, they could also demotivate their fellow students by spreading their unfavourable opinion around the class. It is clear that opting for any of the different alternatives mentioned here depends largely on the priorities the teacher has. In this case, the surprise effect was a priority, which is why I chose to deny them access to the audio files until the opening day of the exhibition.

I must say I was very impressed by the overall result, especially by the quality of the audioguides. I was fascinated by the seriousness of the 6th graders, who appreciated the exhibition like real connoisseurs. They seemed very interested and disciplined while they were there.

Of course one should always use a caveat when making observations about students’ reactions. One can never explain with absolute accuracy why they do or say certain things, whether they mean what they say when they appreciate something. Even in a school like ours the relationship between teachers and students is not one of equals, although there is a palpable spirit of cooperation. It is still on many levels a professional working relationship, with the teachers, as adults, in the role of the figure of authority. This is as it should be, of course, since under age students can and should not take full responsibility for themselves. Most, if not all, students and teachers are aware of this situation. This is why many students say things with the aim in mind to improve the teachers’ opinion of themselves. One should not, and indeed can not, blame them for this. After all, it is a direct result of the education system that students and teachers are parts of.

All these observations aside, the impression that the students made on the teachers who observed them while they went around the exhibition has a not inconsiderable value. Together with the questionnaires they completed after they had listened to the audioguides they make up a sufficient basis for analysis.

I observed that, as far as one can tell, all of the students focused their attention on the exhibits and the audioguides almost all the time. For us, as teachers, this was already impressive in itself. For the 8th graders, who were also there to witness their visitors walking around their exhibition, it was also very gratifying, as some of them told me during and after the lesson. Recording audioguides and listening to them together with one’s own classmates is one thing, but seeing other, younger students appreciate them feels much more rewarding.

It also transpired that the 8th graders and I had judged the level of difficulty correctly. The 6th graders were able to understand the texts that they were listening to. The more difficult words, or those specific to an area discussed in an audioguide were explained in the glossary, which they carried around with them as a handout. This was a two-page list explaining words and expressions used in eight of the texts. Most 6th graders certainly knew some items in the vocabulary list, for example 'although', 'brave' or 'a cup'. However, because many of these 'easy' words were particularly important in order to understand the central message or idea of the audioguides in which they were used. The 8th graders decided to include them after all, because they wanted to rule out the possibility that their audience misunderstood them simply because they did not have a sure enough grasp of the vocabulary that was used. Other words on the list were certainly outside the most of the 6th graders’ grasp. Despite the fact that the 8th graders knew they had to keep their texts simple, they still decided to include a small number of more difficult words that were necessary in the particular contexts. The 6th graders even laughed at the appropriate moments, which means they got the jokes the 8th graders had written for them. This is also an indicator of language, or listening proficiency. (Terui, 2012: 173-174)

After their guided tour, I had asked the visitors to fill in the questionnaire. It required them to answer a few general questions about the exhibition, but also to select two exhibits that they liked in particular. The instructions in the questionnaire asked them to listen to the recording again, to refresh their memory of what exactly was said about the exhibit. The first question was: 'What do you like or dislike about this work of art? Please explain what you mean.' Adding the second sentence is necessary at the level the 6th graders were at that time, as I have found out. They have not yet made a habit of explaining their opinions at length, nor have they been accustomed to supporting their claims and explaining their arguments. Therefore, if one omits to clarify that this is expected of them, the answers that many of them give to opinion questions frequently consist of only one sentence.

The second question was: 'Write down three interesting facts about the painting, or this style of painting, that you learnt today.' This question was asked with the intention of encouraging the visitors to listen closely to the recordings. Furthermore, it created a real need for most of them to listen to the recordings again, because they could not take up enough details in the first listening to answer this question. However, most of them already listened attentively the first time, because the audioguides managed to raise their interest.

3.6. Looking back on the project: student feedback

In the concluding session about the art exhibition project I asked the 8th graders, for reactions to and feedback. We also read many of the feedback questionnaires the 6ème filled in during their exhibition visit. I am well aware of the fact that the opinions students express in the classroom should not always be taken at face value. This is a reason why I will not recount in detail what was said in this final lesson, nor will their reactions form the only basis for my evaluation. Nevertheless, I was very happy to hear that the 8th graders generally had a favourable opinion.

They were also asked to provide suggestions as to how the implementation of such an exhibition could be improved were I to do it again with a different class. These ideas were as interesting to hear as they were valuable. One of the first thoughts was that more time is necessary to prepare an exhibition, in the sense that one should start even earlier, but not necessarily spend more time in class with the preparation. A further suggestion was that it would be better if the visitors are provided with the audio files in due time before the exhibition opens. In the eyes of the 8th graders the exhibits should be printed out in a format bigger than DIN A3, so that more people could look at a particular exhibit at the same time.

When asked what they thought they had learnt from the experience the answers all confirmed each other. The main skills the 8th graders had perfected, in their opinion, were how to do a recording, and how to present a painting. They acknowledged that, in consequence, they were now also able to present other topics or objects in general better than before and that their knowledge of English has improved considerably in the process.

4. Conclusions and Outlook to the Future

After the detailed description and analysis of the many different individual components of the work done in class, this chapter is intended to give a more general overview of the goals achieved and an evaluation of the whole exhibition project.

The first stage consists in looking back on the art exhibition project and highlighting the different skills that the students in the three classes developed during its various stages. A second step is to take a closer look at how far this development has gone, especially concerning the project's long-term effects.

The role of the second sub-chapter of this conclusion is to determine in how far this project might be applicable to classes of a different level of language proficiency, or even other schools.

The third and last part will look ahead and find ways in which such a project could be improved even further in a future realisation, in order to make it even more motivating and effective for the learners.

4.1. Evidence of learning

Projects like the one described here take a considerable amount of time to plan and time to implement. The time students and teachers spend in the classroom is extremely valuable, as one should not forget. Unless they have English speaking friends or family it is the only opportunity for them to use the English they have learnt. Therefore, taking into consideration the great amount of time needed and the necessity of its effective use, it is obvious that assessing the learning outcome after the completion of a lesson sequence is part of a teacher's duty.

In this particular project, the overall aim was to develop a range of meaningful classroom activities in view of training a wide variety of skills. This was achieved in an exceedingly high degree by the 8th graders, since they were more active, being the class who produced the exhibition. The most obvious skills that they furthered while working on the audioguides were speaking and writing. There were a number of plenary discussions about the general concept and the individual exhibits during the preparation phase, all conducted in English. The class also practised speaking during the recording sessions, where they learnt at first hand that attention to detail, especially to pronunciation, was all important. Furthermore, they were listening to the exchanges of opinion as well as to their own and to their classmates' recordings. They developed their research skills when they looked up information about their works of art, while at the same time practising reading. They also had to re-read and revise their own texts, and those written by their peers. Focusing over a length of time on a specific topic helped improve their observation and analysis skills. Some of them were remarkably perspicacious in dealing with the exhibits assigned to them. Finally, as this project was conducted in a cooperative spirit, the students had to make use of, and develop their groupwork skills.

The list is shorter, on the other hand, for the 6th graders. The skills they were encouraged to use and to develop included first and foremost observation and listening, but also analysis and writing. It was only to be expected that there would be fewer skills that thet worked on, because they were not the class that produced the audioguides. They had the role of the audience, and, as such, the recipient of the work invested in the art exhibition. Nevertheless, even if the 6th graders used their receptive skills, listening and reading, more than their productive skills, writing and speaking, the fact remains that, these are part of a competent English speaker's repertoire. Therefore, they must not be neglected in a comprehensive teaching approach.

As a result, the 8th graders are now clearly more competent in describing visual material than before. This skill will benefit them in the coming years, especially in the final exam, as described in chapter 1. Moreover, the students are also able to apply the competences they have developed in this project to other areas. Description, analysis and discussion skills are extremely useful in whichever direction their future personal and professional development will take them, whether at university, or in work-related contexts. Indeed, their final product exceeded the high expectations I had for the students’ work. It is important to mention, though, that when teachers have high expectations for students they should have even higher expectations for themselves, as Todd Whitaker writes. (2004: 33-34) In this way they are able to fulfil their responsibility as teachers.

For obvious reasons, the exact nature of the impact of such a project on the overall language learning progress of the students is very difficult to determine. Several variable factors complicate the evaluation of the intake of the lexis and the general language skills that were related to the project. For example, in order to test vocabulary acquisition and retention with absolute reliability, students would need to do an identical activity or task on multiple occasions before, during and after the project sequence.

This, however, would have exceeded by far the boundaries set for the research and analysis of the art exhibition project. It would also have required making vocabulary acquisition and test design its chief focus. The most significant difficulty in designing such tests lies in ensuring that they are proof against errors in measurement, such as students' form on the day of the tests, or the time of day at which the tests are scheduled. Furthermore, an exact replication of such an activity would certainly have engendered disengagement with the real focus, the exhibition itself, in the 6th graders. The role of the interference from other classroom activities must also be acknowledged, because the class did not work exclusively on this project. For various reasons there were lessons with foci other than the exhibition that I inserted in order to space out the work on the overall concept or the audioguides.

Furthermore, it should be clear that the main aim and objective of this project was to create a range of classroom activities suitable to develop the skills that students need to achieve meaningful and accurate analyses of pictures. This was implemented in three different classes on two different levels with the intention to achieve different products. These were, amongst others the picture descriptions written by the 8th and 6th graders, as well as, of course, the audioguide as a final product. These, especially the audioguide, speak for themselves. The success of the exhibition should not be judged by the sheer number of skills involved; instead, it should be measured in the absolutely convincing quality of the audioguides themselves on one hand, but also in the 6th graders' keen interest that they displayed when they were visiting the exhibition.

The success of such tasks and activities is also defined by the aims staked out in the planning stage before the lesson. In this perspective the activities were very convincing. They generated new vocabulary, and students demonstrated that they had taken in at least some of it by using it in the following lessons. Students included the lexical sets they had learnt in the texts that they wrote, and produced structured analyses of the photographs and paintings that they observed. Therefore, it is to assert that the tasks and activities that constituted the art project were successful.

The immediate, initial evaluation soon after the conclusion of the project was also very satisfactory. However, in order to take the evaluation even further and complement my first impressions I decided to add an occasion that would allow me to sound out the 6th graders' capacities for long term retention of one area of the skills and the vocabulary they had developed. This is why I planned for one of the 6th graders classes a follow-up activity. I decided for a long-term evaluation among the now 5th graders.

This final stage in evaluating the project consisted in a task almost identical to those the 6th graders had worked on. I asked the students of the 5th graders to carry out another picture description and analysis. The similarity to the previous activities was deliberate and it allowed me a direct comparison of the results. The overarching topic that the class was working on during this school year was film and photography. For this reason the class had watched Charlie Chaplin's film The Great Dictator at the beginning of the school year, and the classroom activities and lesson sequences they engaged in subsequently all tied in with the theme set by this film.

In the follow-up activity for the exhibition project that is described here, every student received a different still image taken from different scenes in the film and were asked to write a description using the following clear guidelines:

Photo description:

Describe what you see, in detail.

What were the characters doing, saying, thinking at that moment?

Describe the context: what happened before and after?

Use the present tenses to describe the still image, and the past tenses to describe the plot of the film, and the character's behaviour.

I reminded them of the vocabulary we had compiled on the blackboard in the lesson in which the class first worked on this activity, four months previously, but did not provide them again. The results were very encouraging, overall. Certainly, some students had forgotten some of the vocabulary, or did not follow the instructions closely enough. Others, however, respected the guidelines in their texts, and used the vocabulary that they had encountered previously.

The following example shows how some students wrote very well- structured descriptions that focused on all the important details and located them in the picture:

ʹOn this picture, you can see Charlie Chaplin as the role of the barber in a small road in the ghetto for Jews. It's shortly after the first world war. Located on the right hand side is his barber shop and opposite to it is a lamp post. On the lamp post are loudspeakers. Through these, Hynkel (Chaplin representing Hitler) does announcements. In the background are some people and another shop. Charlie Chaplin is wearing a smoking with a hat and a stick, the typical clothes of Charlie Chaplin. In this moment, he was wondering why someone had written 'JEW' on his window.ʹ

The writer starts her description with two sentences that locate the protagonist of the film and the setting, Chaplin in the Jewish ghetto, after World War I. The next four sentences are a meticulous description of his surroundings, while the last sentence of the first paragraph lists what the main character is wearing. The last sentence of this extract is the beginning of this student's explanation of the context of this scene. In this sentence she switches into the past tense, as she was requested to do in the instructions.

It is clear, then, that the structure of this text follows the guidelines that the class practised in class with very closely. There are some sentences that do not respect the rigid outline of describing visual detail first, then context and interpretation. These are the mention of World War I in the second sentence, or the information that the loudspeakers broadcast Hynkel's announcements. However, this student deliberately rearranged the structure in order to fit in this information at the most logical place in the text. By appending the information about the public announcements to the mention of the loudspeakers in the picture description she avoids having to mention the same item twice in her text. All in all, this long-term evaluation of an important part of the exhibition project therefore confirms the preliminary, decidedly positive conclusion about its overall success.

The particular set-up of the exhibition that took on board the 8th graders' suggestion of integrating graffiti into the overall concept for the exhibition also allowed me to draw a conclusion concerning the other styles of art that were used. Making street art an important part of the exhibition proved to be very motivating for the 8th graders, as well as for the 6th graders. For this reason it can be of use as the initial prompt of a lesson, or the basis for a task or discussion. However, it is not extremely useful as material in an activity where a picture has to be analysed in detail. Apart from a basic description, there is simply not enough to say about many examples of street art, which is a disadvantage when engaging students in language generating activities. The composition and techniques in street are usually simple, especially compared to more classical paintings. Even if the message is often surprising and challenging, it is usually designed to be taken in in one glance. Therefore, I found it extremely rewarding to also include classical paintings in the exhibition. They were carefully planned by the artists, who put a lot of thought into selecting and arranging the subject matter. Consequently, there is a lot more in them to describe and discuss. Moreover, the older paintings produced a very interesting aesthetic contrast to the newer exhibits.

4.2. Recommendations for the implementation in other contexts

In this chapter I will explore the potential feasibility of this project in other classes and schools. For any future application, it must be considered that the Școala Gimnazială nr. 39 „Nicolae Tonitza” is a bit different from other schools in some respects, while it is very similar in others, of course. Among the most significant differences should be mentioned that it is a very large public school (about 1,400 students) with a school system that is continuously being developed. This system is based on student-centred learning and teaching and student autonomy. The school encourages every student to find and define their very own strengths and develop them as far as possible. It also relies on interdisciplinary learning, peer-teaching and student-teacher cooperation. What is unique is that it also has art integrated classes, one per level, with very talented students.

There are also other, less consequential differences. While students have to take an admission exam for these art integrated classes, for example, the future students are chosen in the aim of having a wide variety of personalities with different strengths and interests. The aim is not to select the best art students from those who apply, but to provide students with better opportunities for learning, and the best possible care of them.

All in all, the outline of the project reflected the general philosophy of the school and took advantage of the greater freedom that it grants the individual teacher.

Still, my personal experience of teaching in the traditional school system for almost twenty-five years also allows me to make a positive prognosis on the potential value of the project in less experimental learning surroundings. All the important factors for a successful implementation of such a project are on similar levels: students' language levels, their reactions to tasks and activities, and their behaviour when working on them, amongst others. It should be clear, therefore, that the differences in the school systems represent no obstacle to an implementation of this project elsewhere from an educational perspective. In the last chapter, then, I will discuss the material and organisational aspects of the project.

4.3. Outlook to the future

These final pages are concerned with finding new ways to implement the art exhibition project in an even better, improved re-incarnation. The following ideas should guide and assist others, should they choose to follow the model of this project in a future form in the Școala Gimnazială nr. 39 „Nicolae Tonitza”, or in other schools.

The first conclusion to draw from the experience of organising the exhibition is that it does not necessarily need much time spent in the classroom. Naturally, there is a certain minimum of lessons that is required, but in order for the project to be an achievable challenge, they should not be given too much time to complete their work. If less time is spent in total, this means that the lessons have been used efficiently.

A second recommendation is to invest more time in practising reading and presenting the script. A special focus should be an authentic pronunciation of the individual words. This is important if the audioguides are intended for other learners at a lower lever, who might take in the wrong pronunciation of a new word if they hear it in this context. Another important point to bring to the students' attention is intonation. Especially when they read from the script, the delivery tends to be too monotonous and unconvincing. An optional idea is to provide the audience with the script of the audioguides. This can be of help if understanding the audioguides without support proves too much of a challenge for them.

A further modification could be to transform the questionnaire that the visitors had to fill in into a test. Lesson sequences such as this are usually capped with graded tests. The experience of visiting such an exhibition is motivating enough for most students to take their role as audience seriously, and not sabotage the experience for the whole class by disruptive behaviour. Nevertheless, a real test usually provides an additional extrinsic motivation for students.

Whether in the form of a test, or in the form described here, the questionnaire could comprehend a question where the visiting students are asked to produce a sketch of one of the paintings that they saw in the exhibition. The aim of such an activity is to encourage students to engage more closely, and on a more personal level with the exhibits. It could also open up new routes to interdisciplinary teaching, for example if one chooses to tie in English lessons with art education, and have students train the skills they need to produce the sketches. In this way both subjects would benefit from the project.

Another idea is giving the students even more autonomy in organising the exhibition. Consequently, the role of the teacher would need to be 'reduced' even more to one who, for most of the time, advises rather than controls the students. This is entirely feasible, although it would most certainly entail some delays and false starts in the implementation of the exhibition. Yet, on the other hand, it is equally sure that students would also learn from the experience and develop their organisation skills.

These examples do not only show how the exhibition project could be modified to fit into other school contexts. They illustrate, moreover, that almost every individual, interlacing part of the overall concept, every parameter that defines the project is changeable. Other teachers are not forced to adhere to the decisions that were taken in the planning of this particular version, but free to modify them to suit the learner groups they are working with.

One of the advantages of the project is its affordability, by asking students to use their mobile phones to record their texts. Since the spread of smartphones in this school is probably comparable to that in other schools in developed countries, this should not be a great difficulty, as all smartphones are able to record audio files of convincing quality.

To me, finding so many new ideas and inspirations for a future development of this project, does not indicate that it has been unsuccessful. On the contrary: they are a good reason for optimism. It means that it has been cultivated on fertile ground, metaphorically speaking. Therefore, the conclusion must be that this project can be implemented with just as much success as described here in any school or any classroom at any level of language learning progress. At least for my personal teaching practice, the lessons learnt from this exhibition project will be the basis of many fruitful lessons that are yet to come.

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Appendix A

Questionnaire for the 6th graders

What is art, in your opinion?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What is your favourite type of art?

Drawing (Pencil)

Pastel (Oil Crayons)

Painting (Paint)

Sculpture (Mixed-Media)

Graffiti

Virtual (Computer)

Have you ever visited an art museum?

Yes

No

No, but I intend to.

Why do people make art?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

How much do you appreciate art or an artist’s work?

ʻI don’t like art!ʼ

ʻArt is alright.ʼ

ʻI like art.ʼ

What is creativity to you? Do you consider yourself to be creative? Why or why not?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Appendix B

Picture descriptions by the 6th graders

(as they were written, before I corrected the spelling and grammar mistakes)

In Picture 1 I can see a girl and a dog. The girl has an umbrella and wearing a yellow raincoat and red boots. The dog is white. It is windy and rainy. The girl is flying and the dog is running.

In Picture 2 I can see a girl. She has an orange and yellow umbrella and an orange dress and boots. She looks at a shooting star. She is making a wish. It is night.(LA)

This picture is very beautiful. It’s from Paris on a rainy day. People are walking near the Eiffel Tower and they have colourful umbrellas. I wish I could go to Paris. (AB)

In this picture there are many people walking under the rain. They have black, white, blue, red and yellow umbrellas. Because of the rain, the street looks like a mirror. I love the colors in this picture: on the right yellow, red and green and on the left blue and purple. I think it’s raining on the painting too. (RD)

This is a very funny picture. I like it really much. It is 2D and 3D. It is a mix between a drawing and real objects. Someone drew a man on a door. Then opened the door and you can see his foot with a red boot and his hand holds a funny looking umbrella. There is a cloud too. (RL)

It’s raining in this picture. There is a little girl wearing a red raincoat, yellow boots and a colourful umbrella. She is talking to a goose. (NC)

Oooo, I love this picture! It’s about a woman who is flying with an umbrella like Mary Poppins! She is wearing a white dress and she is chasing stars. The moon is big and full. (AJ)

In this picture I can see a woman who is wearing a black coat and a red umbrella. She is at the park. The trees and the grass are also red. (NM)

There is a boy and a huge Teddy bear in this picture. They both look sad. I don’t know why. Now I am sad too. (EV)

I can see a blonde woman wearing a white dress and white shoes. I don’t think she is human, because she has stiches on her back. Maybe she is a doll, or maybe she is Frankestein’s creation. I don’t know, but the picture is pretty weird. The guy in front of her looks embarassed. He’s obviously going to offer her a bunch of flowers. Love is in the air. (MV, one of the committed students)

In this picture I can see many many flowers and a woman who is obviously the gardener. She looks very happy to take care of the garden. You can observe that she looks extremely tall, but if you look closer, she is as tall as her flowers. So….maybe she is Thumbelina! 😉 (CT – one of he committed students)

I wish for spring because of this picture. It’s spring. A girl with pink hair is on swing. Birds are flying and singing, trees have flowers and if you listen carefully, you can hear her sing. (RC)

This is a girl who plays the cello so well that she and the cello are one person. She plays and she thinks about the story of two boys. They float on the sound from the cello. On the wall there are white tulips. (AN)

I think this picture is from Greece. When I was in Greece, I saw many many cats and beautiful flowers. The stairs look like those in Greece too. The little gir lis very cute and I love this picture very much. (DM)

What is totally awkard about this picture is that it reminds me of Gulliver, but what would Gulliver do sticking his head inside a house? Or it could be the male version of Alice in Wonderland….Hmm…what is obvious is that there’s a giant kid’s head inside a house. Don’t get me wrong, the head is attached to his body, it’s not a horror picture. It’s just weird. On the other hand, the house is on some sort of lake, river, sea…whatever. I don’t get it. What do you think? (EȘ)

On a quiet evening, above all houses, there is a girl riding on the moon with her dog. Or maybe she has Aladin’s magic carpet! She’s wearing a green dress with flowers on it. She is playing an instrument. The dog is sleeping, feeling happy. I think it’s snowing and I think she is a fairy, the Sleep Fairy! (AS)

In this picture I can see a man. He paints the sky. He paints a pigeon. Pigeons are the symbol for peace. It is beautiful. (AA)

Do you think penguins live on grass? I don’t think so. But hey, that’s art, right? So here is a penguin who is hungry. He wants the orange that he sees, but he can’t get it cause he has some cups on his back. Say whaaaat? Yep! Some tea cups. Why would a penguin carry tea cups? This is deep, I don’t understand it. But it would work for cartoons, I guess. (DG)

In my opinion, this picture is very beautiful. It’s about dreams. When we sleep, we dream. It is like going on holiday on the sea. In the picture the boat travels on clouds that look like the sea. EV)

This is like my class at a test during Music hour. The boy on the right knows the answers, he is a nerd. The boy on the left with a dead head on his T-shirt wants the answers. The girl on the left is pissed, and the other boy flies a paper plane. Nice. (AF)

Appendix C

The 8th graders audioguides (in no particular order)

Pierre BONNARD, 1867 – 1947 , French

Woman with Cat

[La femme au chat] 1912

oil on canvas

78.0 (h) x 77.0 (w) cm

Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Hello everyone! I’m the woman in the painting Woman with cat. My cat and I were painted by Pierre Bonnard, a French artist, in 1912. You can find me inside Musée d'Orsay, a museum in Paris. I am very shy so in this painting I look down, but my cat is curious, so she is looking right at you. Look! Her paw is up!I love my cat! But now let’s have a closer look at the painting.

The cream-coloured table divides the painting into two sections, with the darker, richer colours in the background. There is a fireplace on the right that matches the table.

The painting has many circular shapes; the orange in the foreground, my hand, and my head. Bonnard repeats other round shapes on the table. He contrasts these shapes with a number of lines; the vertical lines of the red wall frame my cat and I. The angle of the cat’s body, suggests an animation lacking in the way that I’m not moving. I was waiting for my friend to come visit.

In his work Bonnard preferred several subjects, especially room interiors, landscapes, portraits, nudes and still lifes, returning to each of these randomly.

Thank you for stopping to admire me!

Frank Weston Benson, 1862-1951, American

Summer, 1909

Oil on canvas

91.8 x 113 cm (36 1/8 x 44 1/2 inches)

RISD Museum, Providence, RI, USA

Hi, everyone! My name is Sylvia and this is part of my family: my mom Ellen is standing, looking at the ocean. The others are my sisters Eleanor and Elisabeth and my dad is painting us, of course, like he likes doing very often. His name is Frank Weston Benson and I think his paintings are great! He is a successful painter. I also have a brother, George, who is not here with us. We are Americans and we love summer! How about you?

We spend our summers at our summer home, Wooster Farm, on the island of North Haven, Maine. This is where we are here, in this painting, which was painted in 1909. My father is a member of The Ten, a group of American painters whose work reflects the influence of French Impressionism. While he captures the effects of natural sunlight and sea air with bright colors my mom, sisters and I remain imposing and sculptural.

We are all beautifully dressed in white, and a hat and other belongings are scattered here and there. We chit-chat and admire the blue of the sea of Penobscot Bay, Maine, from our property, Wooster Farm. We went out for a walk and reached this beautiful spot, and decided to stop and admire it.

Don’t you love my dad’s painting?

Henri Matiss, 1869-1954, French

The Romanian Blouse, 1940

Oil on canvas

92×73 cm

Centre Pompidou, Paris

Bună ziua!I had my photo taken years ago wearing a Romanian blouse, called ie in Romanian. Somehow my photo ended up in a French painter’s possession. His name is Henri Matisse and he is an Expressionist. He decided to use the photo as his model for this painting. It was painted in 1940 in Nice, where where Matisse left Paris, occupied by the Germans. I demonstrate the artist’s transition to a simplified manner of writing. My figure is so close to you that my head and skirt are partially cut off by the frame.

A special decorative effect is created by bright colours, including pure red, pink, blue and gold paint. The process of creating some of his paintings Matisse captured in photographs, allowing to follow his search for the “last” composition. Working on the “Romanian blouse”, the artist tried to simplify the form and make it more monumental.

Do you know that there are 15 photos of the “Romanian blouse” at different stages of its “birth”? I find it beautiful how I take on a distinct heart shape. My head is also partially cut off by the upper edge of the canvas.

In the end, I would like you to hear the words of the painter about this painting: ꞌ The whole composition of my picture is expressive: the places occupied by figures, empty spaces around, proportions – everything plays its part. Composition is the art of arranging, in one way or another, the various components of a whole in order to express the artist’s feelings.ꞌ

You can admire me in Paris, at the Pompidou Centre. La revedere!

"Oh don't mind me! Don't apologize for bothering me! I'll just hang here, wide open, until you get back, shall I?"

– The Fat Lady, opening for Ron and Harry but they turn and leave.

The Fat Lady is a painting of a large woman in a pink silk dress which hangs over the round doorway into the Gryffindor Common Room. To be able to get in the Common Room through the portrait hole, a person must give the correct password to the Fat Lady. Then she swings her frame out from the wall. She doesn’t like people who wake her up for no good reason and she loves leaving her painting late to go visiting, making it impossible to get into Gryffindor Tower. She is friends with Violet and she sometimes gets tipsy, which means she drinks too much wine.

Passwords used to enter Gryffindor Tower through the Fat Lady's portrait: caput draconis (Latin for "dragon's head"), pig snout, wattlebird, fortuna major (Latin for "better luck"), fairy lights, banana fritters, Mimbulus mimbletonia and others of the sort.

This is not a real painting, but a fictional one, from the Harry Potter film series and the character was created by the famous writer J.K.Rowling. The painting looks Neoclassical. Oh, and do you know that the characters in the paintings in Harry Potter series can move around, sleep, talk? How cool is that?

Her name probably refers to the well-known phrase ꞌIt ain’t over till the fat lady singsꞌ, which means that one shouldn’t assume the outcome of a situation untill it’s actually over.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1775-1852, British

The Fighting Temeraire, 1839, oil on canvas, 90.7 x 121.6 cm

The National Gallery, London

Person 1: I know this! It was painted by William Turner, an English romantic artist.

Person 2: Oh yeah. I remember. We saw it in class, right?

Person 1: Mm- hm. An epic scene in a spectacular sunset!

Person 2: Wasn't there a story about the ship or something like that?

Person 1: Just let your imagination take you back in 1805 and feel the warmth of the setting sun… and I will tell you the story.

Person 1: The big white sailing ship you see on the left is the glorious "Fighting Temeraire", a war ship that played an important role in the victory of Nelson in the battle of Trafalgar. It is towed by a black steam boat of the early nineteenth century on her way to be broken up…

Person 2 (finishing the sentence of the first person): … because her time has finally come to an end.

Person 1: Exactly! I like this painting because of the calm and almost sad but still nostalgic atmosphere.

Person 2: You have a very melancholic vision of the painting, you know, talking about the setting sun and the old ship which will be destroyed.

Person 1: Mm-hm.

Person 2: But if you look at it again, you will discover a completely different point of view. Imagine the sun isn't setting but rising. It's a new age. We are now in the early nineteenth century and we can clearly see progress in the painting. The black steam boat is a symbol for the industrial revolution. It's strong and fast.

Person 1: You're right. I think both interpretations are great. Yours is more optimistic, though.

Person 2: In any case, it's one of William Turner's best works of art.

Bansky

British, probably born in 1973

Girl with baloon, 2002

Painted on facade of a London store

Bansky is one of the most legendary graffiti artists, identified as a troubadour of modern times. He is a famous and amazing artist. Today, Banksy is considered one of the great pesonalities of this world, with his subversive actions.

A little girl who lets a heart-shaped balloon go: Girl with Balloon represents one of Banksy’s most popular works. Next to it, there was the famous inscription “There is always hope”. Always produced with a stencil, this drawing was painted in 2002 on the facade of a London store. But in recent years, English and tourists can no longer admire it: in 2014, it was taken from the wall to be sold for auction. Recently, in October 2018, the same painting had been awarded to an anonymous buyer by telephone at the Contemporary Art Evening Sale for 1,042,000 pounds, a record for the artist. Shortly after, a sort of document shredder apparently hidden inside the frame, destroyed much of the canvas that slipped out of the bottom of the picture into many strips.

The details are obviously unknown, but after that happened, he commented on Instagram: “Going, going, gone…”

Bansky

British, probably born in 1973

Hammer Boy

Banksy is an excellent example of the way street artists use the surrounding environment as an integral part of their works. In this work he painted a simple black silhouette of a child with a big hammer, about to hit a fire hydrant. The work is located on 79th Street, just east of Broadway, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Banksy and other street artists encourage us to imagine spaces in the city, surfaces and objects in a different way, and he makes us smile. He also stimulates our imagination. City spaces and surfaces are not limited to their destined uses. You have the freedom to create another image of that space or surface. A fire hydrant is not only a water tool, but can transform in a toy for children.

Nicolae Tonitza

(1886-1940), Romanian

Portrait of a little girl

Person 1: Hey, look, this is the logo of our school!

Person 2: Indeed! I loooove this painting!

Person 1: Me too! It was obviouly painted by Nicolae Tonitza! Easy!

Person 2: Yes, I know he loved painting portaits, and especially of his wife and of children!

Person 1: Similar to many of Tonitza’s portraits, the eyes are the center of interest: she looks directly to the painter, but also back to herself. She seems to see an inaccessible world. I think the model was his daughter.

Person 2: Even better! I love it!

Vincent Van Gogh, Dutch, 1853-1890

73,70X92,10cm

Oil on canvas

Museum of Modern Art, New York

The Starry Night is one of the most recognized pieces of art in the whole entire world. It was painted by Vincent Van Gogh in 1889 during his stay at the asylum of Saint-Remy-de-Provence. The painting describes the view from the window of his asylum room. You can admire this masterpiece in New York City, at the Museum of Modern Art. The Starry Night was one of Van Gogh’s late works, as he committed suicide the following year.

There are as many interpretations as its viewers, sol et your imagination go free and try to transport yourself into the painting, admiring its marvelous colours and shapes.

H&M Billboard / Daniel Soares. Hamburg, 2012

'Background story: Two girls are walking on the streets of Hamburg. Then they see the poster. How do they react? What do they think about it?'

Sounds: No music. The noises of an urban city in the background.

Dialogue:

Person 1 (calling): – Hey, come here and take a look at this pretty bikini. It would look great on me. Wouldn't it?'

Person 2: – Yeah, it's perfect for you and just look at the price. It's so cheap!

Person 1: – But wait! What's this box on the left?!

Person 2: – It looks like a Photoshop toolbar!

Person 1 (worrying): – It has to be a mistake!

Person 2: – Maybe! But it could also be on purpose.

Person 1: – Why would someone do that?

Person 2: – To make the people think about what's real on this billboard!

Person 1 (confused): – I don't understand what you mean.

Person 2: – Well, just take a closer look at this poster. Look at the model in the middle. What do you think when you see her?

Person 1 (unsure): – Ehm, she's beautiful?!

Person 2: – Exactly! Her skin is perfectly tanned. She's not too fat and not too thin. She has a well-trained body. Her makeup is immaculate and her hair is perfectly arranged. All in all, she is a stunning woman. Is this realistic though?

Person 1: – No! But-

Person 2 (interrupting): – And look at the background. The model is sitting in perfectly clear, turquoise water and the sky is completely blue, without even the smallest cloud.

Person 1: – Yes this can't possibly be completely real, but that's normal. Every advertisement is reworked. It has to look pretty, so that the people will buy it.

Person 2: – Precisely! And this poster wants to remind the people to pay attention, to think about what's real and what's just a illusion!

Person 1: – But what's so bad about it? It's just a Bikini!

Person 2: – The Bikini isn't the bad thing! The alarming thing is that people let themselves be manipulated that easily. Because when they see this beautiful, perfect model in this Bikini, they think they would also look that beautiful in this Bikini and they want to buy it. That's marketing! Manipulating people's minds and we don't even notice it! Especially the fashion and beauty industry manipulate us.

Person 1: – Ohh maybe you could be right!

Person 2: – Of course I'm right. I'm happy that there are some artists who remind us of this sometimes.

Appendix D – Art exhibition feedback and glossary (common for both 6th and 8th graders)

Dear Student,

I would like to ask you some questions and I would like you to answer in the most honest and open way you can. Your answer will help me evaluate the impact of visual art in the teaching of English. Thank you.

(Remember: this project is completely confidential. Therefore, your name will be removed after it is over.)

Which activities were your favourite in this project? (you can choose more than one)

Playing the Dixit game

Discussing about art

Visual art speaking and writing activities

Making of the audioguide

Listening to the tracks of the audioguide

Researching picture and information about them on the internet

Which activities were your least favourite? Why?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Which activities gave you the opportunity to speak and write English?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What exactly did you like best about this project?

_____________________________________________________________________

What did you dislike about it?

_____________________________________________________________________

What would you suggest as improvement of the project for the future?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Glossary

Foreground

= the people, objects, countryside, etc. in a picture or photograph that seem nearest to you and form its main part: In the foreground of the painting is a horse and cart.

Still life

= a type of painting or drawing of an arrangement of objects that do not move, such as flowers, fruit, bowls, etc.: We went to an exhibition of 17th century Dutch still lifes.

Impressionism

= a style of painting, which began in France in the 1860s, in which the artist tries to represent the effects of light on an object, person, area of countryside, etc.

Expressionism

= a style of art, music, or writing, found especially in the 1900s, that expresses extreme feelings

Manner

= the way in which something is done: She stared at me in an accusing manner.

Canvas

= strong, rough cloth used for making tents, sails, bags, strong clothes, etc.; a piece of this cloth used by artists for painting on, usually with oil paints, or the painting itself: These two canvases by Hockney would sell for £1,500,000.

Troubadour

= a male poet and singer who travelled around southern France and northern Italy between the 11th and 13th centuries entertaining rich people

Stencil

= a piece of card, plastic, metal, etc. into which shapes have been cut, used to draw or paint patterns onto a surface; a picture made by drawing or painting through the holes in such a piece of card, etc. onto a surface: She did a stencil of a rainbow on her daughter's bedroom wall.

Shredder

= a tool or machine that is used for cutting things into very small pieces: a paper/document/vegetable shredder

Much of the documentary evidence against her had been put through the shredder before she was arrested.

Auction

= a usually public sale of goods or property, where people make higher and higher bids (= offers of money) for each thing, until the thing is sold to the person who will pay most: a furniture auction

They're holding an auction of jewellery on Thursday.

The painting will be sold at auction next week.

The house and its contents are being put up for auction.

Angle

= the space between two lines or surfaces at the point at which they touch each other, measured in degrees: The interior angles of a square are right angles or angles of 90 degrees.

Hydrant

= a vertical pipe, usually at the side of the road, that is connected to the main water system of a town and can supply water, especially for dealing with fires: a fire hydrant

Tipsy

= slightly drunk: Auntie Pat is getting a little tipsy again.

Scattered

= covering a wide area: Toys and books were scattered about/around the room.

Chit-chat

= informal conversation about matters that are not important: "What did you talk about?" "Oh, it was just chit-chat."